My best friend taught me to inhale
as we sat at my open bedroom window
trying to blow the smoke outside
to the walnut trees and the Ozark night.
My father sat downstairs in his brown
vinyl chair, reading the Bible, enclosed
in a red cloud of rage. Upstairs,
I drew the burning smoke into my lungs,
coughing and taking in the poison
that would fill me again and again
in the years to come. 

Carolyn Miller

Poet and painter living in San Francisco, whose most recent book of poetry, Light, Moving, was published by Sixteen Rivers Press in 2009. Her first full-length collection, After Cocteau, was published by the same press in 2002.

Her work has appeared in The Gettysburg Review, The Southern Review, and Prairie Schooner, among other journals; and her awards include the James Boatwright III Prize for Poetry from Shenandoah, and the Rainmaker Award from Zone 3.

More on the Web: By, About, and Beyond

⚡ A Warm Summer in San Francisco, poem in Silver Birch Press (5 July 2013)

⚡ The World as It Is, poem at Poetry Foundation

⚡ Two Poems + Commentary: “New Lines for Fortune Cookies” and “Swimming” in Serving House Journal (Issue 6, Fall 2012)