A Few Small Clarifications

Silver-crested bird
soars from the flowering dogwood,
vanishes in moonlight

Actually, it isn’t a bird. It’s gleaming Athena in her burnished breastplate,
busting out of Zeus’ frontal lobe. Yes, there are definitely flowers, but they’re
Cadillac-pink petunias crowning the horns of a giraffe. And the moonlight
comes from a star-shaped jar in my pantry. At night I pour it into the waffle iron
and nothing splendid dares to disappear.









Pamela Miller has published four collections of poetry, most recently Miss Unthinkable (Mayapple Press). Her work has appeared, or is forthcoming, in RHINO, New Poetry from the Midwest 2017, Circe’s Lament: Anthology of Wild Women Poetry, Olentangy Review, and many other journals and anthologies. A recently retired former magazine editor and freelance writer, she lives in Chicago with her husband, science fiction writer Richard Chwedyk, and their collection of toy dinosaurs and frogs.