I Can’t Be Turning Thirty
(listen to the poem, read by the author)
1.
I remember my body, that brief spell persisting
but an hour, its sheen in the bath
water-licked rolls of belly
one pressed against another
blueprint of veins on porcelain
the rusted tap
a paisley pink towel hanging on its hook
flip flops and dirty toes
the secret flowering of breasts
the epiphany of a groin
harbingers shouting: Where are you going, girl?
2.
Sirens whine through the night
erase the memory
of every text message unsent
every social media post unposted
Misdiagnosed for months after the stroke
my seventh cranial nerve weeping, a tilted frown
the doctors’ anarchy of voices
no fingers to grip in the cold-numb
My god an iron lung
hardly pumping
bags of dust
in and out
3.
Outside, December jogs by like a freight train
twilights deliver fuchsia
textiles of eyes
frostbitten planes of faces
My father whistles Mozart’s 11th piano sonata
I pretend I don’t hear
worry on his tongue
he shuffles outside my bedroom
like he’s going high-up
in an office building with tiny windows
in a neighborhood he doesn’t know
4.
The starched anonymous
pedestrians: Are you ok?
a whole world I cannot touch
cellophane I cannot crack
a dried-out egg
on my idle back
Photographs visit me—
my existence, grocery bills and tickling grasses
coaches to and from Boston
straightened research papers in hands
smiles, lust
intact formulas of light and darkness
falling from me like diadems
hugging their phosphorescence
The limb
of the willow
demands nothing
of life
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Pitting Hope Against Hope
(listen to the poem, read by the author)
It should’ve been another story, the one that was intended
Instead of the one that happened. Living like this,
Desiring to rewrite what’s been false or rendered illegible
Isn’t what we wanted. Hoping the mapped-out story
Would’ve been like a long afternoon on the coastline when everything
Is inexhaustibly present—the redwoods uncoiling their shadows
Over the hills where the wind flutes its looping melody
And roses react with fragrant blooms—was excessively
Simple and myopic. Too soon the petals,
Having turned black, would fall, and the annulling October
Would blanket the trail, and we, with buckets in hand, would trudge,
Kneel, and salt the cement clean. What else could there be
At this stage in the day for us but longing to atone
And begin at once, the sun’s pity as it recedes.
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About the Author
Elaine Miriam’s work has been published in Sky Island Journal, The Amsterdam Review, Panoplyzine, and many others. She has been nominated for the 2025 Best New Poets Anthology and the 2025 Forward Prize for Best Single Poem.