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Prairie Schooner 78.2 (2004) 121-123



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Three Poems

Sawmill Coffee, 1940

After the night shift,
restless men led their
hunting dogs
into the dark pines.

While the hounds
treed their prey,
made the music the men
loved best, they built
a pit-fire.

In a tin-can kettle,
they boiled creek water
and coffee, cut the mix
with a fine dollop
of corn whiskey.

They talked about farms,
owning a piece of land
like their fathers did,
never working again
where every man lost
at least one finger.

While the foreman
slept like a dead man,
they stayed drunk
but awake, cursed
the sun as it began
to rise. [End Page 121]

Robert Johnson

Did he sell his soul
to the devil, learn
to play and sing the blues
while a blood-red moon
rose above the cane fields?

Did he live his songs
before he wrote them:
fight mill hands with
razor blades, sleep
with sharecropper's wives,
drink jars of poisoned whiskey?

Was he buried at the crossroads
so his restless spirit
would never rise
and haunt the fish camps
and juke-joints again?

Or does he lie
in a potter's field
filled with the bones
of black men
who also fought,
bled and died
beneath the white-hot sun? [End Page 122]

Elvis in Oz

When Elvis died,
he found himself
on the yellow-brick road,
walking alone.

He asked the Wizard
to change him back
into a truck driver,
a country boy
who took his paycheck
home to mama.

The Wizard said, "Why not?"

There and then,
Elvis lost the rings
on both hands,
a rhinestone suit,
a hundred pounds
of ugly fat.

Soon he was driving
the streets of Memphis,
winking at the pretty girls
and singing, just for fun,
songs off the radio.

William Miller's work has appeared in journals such as the Southern Review, Louisiana Literature, The Southern Poetry Review, and the Amherst Review. He has published four poetry collections, The Trees are Mended, Old Faith, Breathed On Glass, and Skywalkers.


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