A PICTURE OF DYLAN THOMAS
Not the bard, a cherubic bad boy,
declaimer of Yeats on a barroom floor—
he is relaxed, casual, feet propped.
on a rail, cigarette in hand.
All those masks have slipped away
in this this tight frame,
the last Welsh clay pressed to
his forever sleeping face.
How can we know the dancer
from the dance without knowing
every detail: sleeper in church,
bottles filled with childhood sugar,
the smoke from a crematorium
that turned his father’s dream
of being more than a schoolmaster
Into a column of black smoke?
Idle, offstage, impish, he will
soon be called by three figures
on an urn: love, ambition, the muse
without mercy, stars in her hand.
PATTI AND ROBERT
Barefoot, standing on a fire escape
somewhere in the Village, they are only
a camera click away from fame.
Before they passed into a shadow
that swallowed them up and spat
them out, before they found
where the rainbow ends,
they were amateurs, lived only
to take random pictures, make art
out of anything. The music that deafens
and leavens, still shots of a man
In a leather mask, a bound boy
at his feet were unheard, unseen
in a cold-water flat. Death rattles
and sick beds were not real,
a disease without a name, the second
by second loss of breath, the last stitch
tearing in a flag of protest.
Leave them there, holding each other,
loosely, closely, not Wendy and Peter,
Hansel and Gretel at the edge
of a dark forest. Friends always,
sometimes lovers, they are twins
in a private constellation, “just kids.”
GIRL IN STRAIGHTJACKET
Last night, in Latrobe Park,
a homeless girl was put in a straitjacket,
hauled to her feet and fell sideways
across the backseat of a police car.
The other “unhoused” said she
was crazy when she fell asleep
sitting up. Sleeping in the Quarter
is a crime now, punishable by
72 hours in in a psych ward
or any barred space they can fit you
in central lockup. All night,
she sat there alone, twisting, turning
towards any exit. If wishes were horses,
she split that triple weave and rode
bareback down Tulane Avenue.
A girl without hopes or dreams,
a past or future, she was free enough
to ring sparks from iron hooves,
set the grass, the live oak trees,
the sleeping city on fire.
William Miller’s ninth collection of poetry, Under Cheaha, has been published from Shanti Arts Press in 2025. His poems have recently appeared in The Lullwater Review, The Cumberland River Review, Abraxas, Artemis and Grey Sparrow Journal. He lives and writes in the French Quarter of New Orleans.
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