Rosencranz and Guildenstern are characters from Shakespeare’s Hamlet (1599-1601), also revived in 1966 in an absurdist play by Tom Stoppard (Rosencranz and Guildenstern are Dead). From Public Domain.
The world is filled with them. They file through the streets and into our courtyards. Well-dressed, respectful, they ask leading questions, smile politely and walk away. Who are they and why do we suffer them? Hardly princes, mad or not, we give up our secrets or lie outright, send them on their way. Someone is collecting a file on us, grist for a data bank, an all-knowing intelligence in the blue ether. They can only plot our demise, total destruction. Their questions are simple tools in a mad King’s hands. Something is rotten in the state of everywhere and all of us will stand for judgement. in front of a review board, our files opened and reviewed with bureaucratic heartlessness, a final assessment typed and filed away. Paranoids, even paranoids, have real enemies.
William Miller’s ninth collection of poetry, Under Cheaha, is forthcoming from Shanti Arts Press in 2025. His poems have appeared in many journals, including The Penn Review, Shenandoah, Prairie Schooner and West Branch. He lives and writes in the French Quarter of New Orleans.
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PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL
PRISON LIBRARY
A few books are stacked on a rolling cart;
small wheels turn and faintly squeak.
The trustee is young, tattooed and bald.
Time passes without passing—every sky
is a grey square between towers, a stretch
of stucco wall.
Words matter here. Books are passed
from hand to nervous hand. Reading is risky;
ideas in cold print are messages
from the underground, secret code
for the resistance movement in blue shirts
with white numbers.
Escape is compressed into a story
about escape, a man who almost drowned
but washed ashore naked,
free from the wreck of the ship,
a sole survivor. Books are the most dangerous
explosive, more deadly than Semtex
packed inside a pipe bomb hurled
into a line of policemen with body armour,
high-tech shields.
No man refuses to read unless he is willing
to die on the inside, die slowly
behind iron bars.
DEATH OF A GARDEN DISTRICT MANSION
All afternoon it burned on live tv.
The city watched one of the oldest mansions
turn from a benign tyrant to charred timber,
listened to the crack of ancient beams.
And though there were three murders, five carjackings
and a double shotgun in the Lower 9th burned
with a homeless man inside, no one cared.
Sacred as Mardi Gras, plastic beads and coconuts thrown,
this house belonged to everyone. While the trucks
pumped water, orders were shouted in vain,
the rich watched in horror, the poor happy
to see the barn collapse. A woman whose
grandmother was a maid there, her mother too—
thought of their days spent wiping down sideboards,
washing crystals one by one in a bucket
of water and solvent, hanging them on the chandelier.
until the light shone through and cast its magic
on the teakwood floor. What about the ghosts?
someone asked, and there was nervous laughter.
All old houses had ghosts, hid murders,
incest, even duels in the back yard—shotguns
at twenty paces. But no ghosts appeared—
no cries were heard of pain or release.
By dusk the flames were down, and two candlesticks,
a single portrait had been saved from the fire:
an octoroon mistress with curled hair,
hands folded on her green crinoline lap,
stared at invisible chains.
William Miller’s eighth collection of poetry, Lee Circle, was published by Shanti Arts Press in 2019. His poems have appeared in many journals, including, The Penn Review, The Southern Review, Shenandoah, Prairie Schooner and West Branch. He lives and writes in the French Quarter of New Orleans.
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PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL
Form Rejection Letter
In this star chamber, three men
with cowls read endless poems,
the paper offerings of souls
mailed with a return envelope.
A pair of ancient scales weigh
and measure the worth
of uncommon pain squeezed
into verse -- metered, rhymed
or free. Hearts break, beauty
dies, but there is only space
enough for poems that fit
current editorial needs.
Once human, poets themselves,
they must coldly judge the most
awful confessions, maps
of despair, personal grief.
And on that scale, your best words
almost tip the golden bowl,
a pound, just half-pound,
an ounce found wanting.
Coyotes
In her Irish Channel kitchen,
she drinks imported herbal tea.
Her backyard is safe for two
thriving little kids. All is well
until night—she sees the leanest,
meanest dog lying with
her pups as if she owned
the grass. This is no park breed
with sleek brushed fur,
fed Ethiopian grain by hand.
Her husband calls the police,
who call Fish and Game,
who never call back.
All the moms, all the children
are asleep except for two
mothers who know men
protect no one, not really,
not even their own families.
They breed quickly, run off
to the batture* or fall on
the couch, watch the replay
of the Saints last home game.
Their wives would kill, rip
and tear flesh from female bones
if it came to that. A truce
is made, eye to eye understanding,
a secret woman’s pact.
Grown pups wander off—
their mothers too in dreams,
still young enough to mate for fun.
*Batture: Bar in New OrleansWomen’s Shelter, York, PA
All that summer, I did Christ’s chores—
Meals on Wheels, the only man
at the clothing drive, penance
for leaving my wife, the woman
I left my wife for.
Past red brick facades, colonial
slave porches, I followed a wet
cobblestone street to a door
with a barred window,
rang the buzzer.
That face in the window turned
me to stone, the pale woman’s
hard brown eyes, her only
request simple and blunt—
“Put it down, leave.”
I wanted credit, time served—
my mother abandoned me
when I was twelve. I still
saw her in every dyed blonde
with fake breasts.
No other choice, retreat inevitable,
I put down two plastic bags
filled with toothbrushes,
toothpaste, candy bars
and soap bricks.
These walls were made
of more than fired clay
troweled by slave hands--
they were two-feet thick
like the fear between us.
Ruth’s Garden
Latex gloves, surgical green,
protect her hands from thistles,
sticky thorns, opioid needles.
The homeless are the children
she never had, never wanted,
not even since Katrina
made her homeless as the next
pale survivor in long line for
a FEMA trailer.
These ferns and flowers redeem
her spotted hands, watered
with a swan-neck spout
twice a day. Like a turtle’s,
her shell is thick enough
to repel the insults of gutterpunks
on the broken sidewalk,
their contempt for an old lady
who believes in growing
green things. Survival
of the unfit is the unhealthy norm
in a Quarter that once
was a neighbourhood,
beer drunk from tin buckets
on the banquette, a light
in every dormer window.
She alone is the reptile,
the mud creature who
reminds us a rose is still
a rose, nothing blooms
without a few drops of love.
William Miller’s eighth collection of poetry, Lee Circle, was published by Shanti Arts Press in 2019. His poems have appeared in many journals, including, The Penn Review, The Southern Review, Shenandoah, Prairie Schooner and West Branch. He lives and writes in the French Quarter of New Orleans.
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PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL
Borderless 