Theater of Inheritance

Fenced in the naming, a music:

A crescendo of water lifts

a shape. This inspires the first

conscious attempt at sex: The bodies bellow

marvelous, the faces slack

awry. The world stills.

A song in the reeds

orchestrates itself.

We no longer hear miraculous

tales of birth: God’s finger pointing

yes, you carry my next son.

My father almost had

a son. After me: My arrival too

early, too small to survive a night

alone. A blueness snuck into us

and then I breathed. See how I hint

so early. See how a tale

repeats: The water makes marvelous

shapes, so we emulate it. And the song:

A boy put his ear

to my throat,

hand to my loins, and pressed

to hear what he could pluck

from me—I hated it.

I cannot, in good faith, listen further.

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CARLY JOY MILLER is the author of Ceremonial (Orison Books, 2018), selected by Carl Phillips as the winner of the 2017 Orison Prize for Poetry, and the chapbook Like a Beast (Anhinga Press, 2017), winner of the 2016 Rick Campbell Prize.