Sample Poems by MaryAnn L. ‎ Miller

---

Studio Trees


In my studio, trees ‎grow
made of paper and ink.
The paper is smooth
on one side rough on the ‎other,
the ink a chemical
burn forced through

the screen.
See the skulls ‎that
appear among the leaves.
It could be a bouquet
of dried white magnolias. ‎ ‎
But, it’s a copse

of ink trees, hiding
history. When it snows
the skulls ‎ disappear
forget about them,
life is beautiful,
peaceful again.

Don’t part ‎the leaves
or shake the snow
down, you would see
the Black corpses
hanging ‎there still
waiting for justice.

---

Ormolu Clock at the ‎Rosenbach Museum Philadelphia

Two delicate serpents ‎holding
our diminishments on a Baillon clock.
Time is a snake’s tongue flicking at ‎ ‎
the hours, the other clicking off minutes.

The circle of time spins ‎slowly
swelling thoughts of the past
mashing them into the present
with shocking ‎naiveté.

Truth comes out.
Omissions cause questions
or repressions. A golden ‎clock
cannot camouflage the ugliness of history.

Seconds tick by and fly into each ‎other;
people live within those seconds
dark nights of collisions
between memory ‎and what has become.

This clock has been gagged.
What has not been ‎counted?
Gone by unmarked, leaving
gilt and craft to museum eternity

an ‎exquisite creation, with no function.
Our bodies, not timeless, full of guilt
and guile ‎wear from the inside like
gold pounded into ‎powder.

---

Anywhere Birds Meet is a ‎Church


1964 Fourth of July parade in this white New Jersey ‎town
marching band from Malcolm X Shabazz High School in Newark.
That cadence ‎penetrated our diaphragms
resounded in our bone skulls
shook the legs of the old half-‎dead neighbors.

Those high school kids had feathers on their heads
round hats ‎with plumes bobbing as they strutted their stuff
down Center Street right past my rental ‎house
lighting up that asphalt with shiny blaring brass,
infectious beat ricocheting off ‎tuned snare drums.

Anywhere birds meet is a church,
bringing ancestors with ‎them.

---

Dinner Theater
After Cornelius ‎Eady

Feathered hats kept in round boxes
reserved for Sunday worship and dinner ‎ ‎
theater matinees at noon, bus rides
from Newark to suburbia, where I
waitress so ‎my children will have Christmas.

Women their crests perched on proud heads ‎ ‎
recently bowed in prayer, feet twitching,
anticipating, on the bus for an ‎hour,
matching dresses with jackets with chapeaux
conversation like music contralto ‎sopranos.

Laughter rising up that high roof decorated
like a cathedral with pine ‎bough swags.
Table-hopping gold finches, scarlet cardinals,
passerine perchers ‎sashaying, exchanging
pointed pleasantries, Ysatis perfumed hugs.

On the ‎Program: Amahl and the Night Visitors
sung by New York talent—
Does it compare to ‎the music they’ve already heard this morning?
Aretha Franklin will sing in her ‎inauguration hat in a future
none of us can see clearly in the barely parting snow. ‎ ‎