I remember when
Earth carried trees
instead of skyscrapers
like concrete babies never
learning to walk. Who am
I to open an ozone, juice the
veins of metal rivered downstream
a power plant? There are beans stalking
between my toes, jammed signals fighting
the airwaves for freedom under satellite’s rule.
I fly through clouds wetting my unyielding hair
for a blissful moment before turbulence. There’s
a new religion I wish to take shape of. Inside is a
hotel full of extinction. I remember wanting to meet
god & be best friends like we have known each other
our whole lives. Pastors claim I have a hole in my heart
attacking my morals. They say I strut through too many
vacant doors needing to stretch my spine like a cigar wrapper
compressing my half-life. A Styrofoam statue of each human
occupying this rock is buried in a graveyard land filled with pebble
planets nibbling the sandwich bags our mothers packed us for lunch.
What a wonderful parking lot, blanketing Earth’s cold skin with absorbent
blacktop. Barefoot we invent excuses more artificial than our own intelligence.
So long skull, I owe you a fermented beverage the next lifetime we bump into one another.
Written by Corey Miller
Corey Miller’s writing has appeared in Salt Hill, Booth, Pithead Chapel, Hobart, X-R-A-Y, and elsewhere. He has received support from the 2023 Literary Cleveland Breakthrough Residency, Vermont Studio Center, and the Kenyon Review Writers Workshop ’23. He reads for TriQuarterly. When Corey isn’t brewing beer for a living in Cleveland, he enjoys taking the dogs for adventures. www.CoreyMillerWrites.com