James Miller
The Rot Economy
for Ed Zitron
In our rented bed we talk about how safe
the drones are, the promises they have made.
Here are two on my pillow, slurping salt
from my earlobe. Do you hear their verses?
An elaborate prosody, so few silences.
And the shallow pool will soon boil away,
leaving their eggs asleep in shale, silt. Ninety years
to dig themselves out. An exquisite wall of vinyl
in the sitting room. We can hear a street scene
in the Greatest Hits, tear-gas and soft butter
spread on student faces. They say it cuts the sting,
you fling blindness from your chafed cheeks,
blink and take up the cry again. I think we skated
all summer to this song. The synths were preset,
half-horn, clean as elective surgery. Ice only
a rumor on the dancefloors of West Berlin.
In our rented bed we talk about how safe
the drones are, the promises they have made.
Here are two on my pillow, slurping salt
from my earlobe. Do you hear their verses?
An elaborate prosody, so few silences.
And the shallow pool will soon boil away,
leaving their eggs asleep in shale, silt. Ninety years
to dig themselves out. An exquisite wall of vinyl
in the sitting room. We can hear a street scene
in the Greatest Hits, tear-gas and soft butter
spread on student faces. They say it cuts the sting,
you fling blindness from your chafed cheeks,
blink and take up the cry again. I think we skated
all summer to this song. The synths were preset,
half-horn, clean as elective surgery. Ice only
a rumor on the dancefloors of West Berlin.
--
James Miller is a native of the Texas Gulf Coast, now settled in Oklahoma City. A Best Of the Net nominee, his work has appeared in Best Small Fictions (2021), ANMLY, Brooklyn Review, South Florida Poetry Journal, Hopkins Review, UCity Review, Citron Review, San Pedro River Review, Heavy Feather Review, Atlanta Review, North Dakota Quarterly, Psaltery & Lyre, and elsewhere. Follow on Bluesky @jandrewm.bsky.social.
James Miller is a native of the Texas Gulf Coast, now settled in Oklahoma City. A Best Of the Net nominee, his work has appeared in Best Small Fictions (2021), ANMLY, Brooklyn Review, South Florida Poetry Journal, Hopkins Review, UCity Review, Citron Review, San Pedro River Review, Heavy Feather Review, Atlanta Review, North Dakota Quarterly, Psaltery & Lyre, and elsewhere. Follow on Bluesky @jandrewm.bsky.social.