MICHAEL MILLER July 2010

Michael Miller is the publisher of Moon Tide Press and the organizer of the "Second Thoughts" poetry-and-music series at the Muckenthaler Cultural Center in Fullerton. A Southern California native, he earned a master's degree in creative writing from the University of East Anglia and has been published in both the United States and England. In 2008, he served as a poetry judge for the San Diego Book Awards. His first book, College Town, came out in April from Tebot Bach.

Like a Cathedral

Like a cathedral,
she is stone and echo,
warm sanctuary for the hands and mouth
with wooden angels in the corners
missing eyes.

She and I slip in, drop our coins
in the battered collection plate on the table.
The pews are empty.
We are country travelers,
our shoes torn from stepping on brambles
and the rocks on the path outside.

I brush my mouth across her
and kiss the markers of saints,
the forgotten, stillborn.
Each brick an eternity.
The doors in back fade into corridors,
darkened by centuries, sculpted by hands.

Set every candle on the altar burning.
Churn the water in the baptism tub.

Her face is stained glass and rusted jewels.
Invaders now,
we ransack for treasure,
sleep abundant on the dust of tombs.

January

(I know) I'm losing you
we speak
the words in parentheses
never raising our voices enough
to rattle the ice
on the locked windows
a newspaper lies
with its secrets open
around the plates on the kitchen table
the last stains of yesterday's meals
left drying
in sunbeams
your sweat still clings
to the aging mattress
the nights that we lie awake together
your breaths thin
arms aromatic
with the hot musk of secondhand coats
sometimes I watch you
(you must know this)
naked inside the morning mirror
chest hanging casually
eyes tracking patterns
in the gray hair swirling
between your fingers
(I remember the sweat lines
the stifled laughs
shivering up the stairs in winter
two waists entwined on a couch
red-eyed
the floor scattered with a younger man's shoes)
we live
in solitudes
smile across them
pack universes in our drawers
wake at dawn
to the roar of engines
pounding a new day
through the rush of snow
only
those moments in the evening
when the sky pulls low
you lean against me
wrap your fingers
around the hands
that brushed the makeup off your cheeks
murmur the words
you heard last night
in dreams about ascending
(lights blinding
I know)