poetry by john miller
tidewater hedge-witch
for my grandmother
I. Sympathetic Magic
I woke to a scream and ran
to her in tears. Mimi cocked an ear
and purred, Oh honey,
that’s just an old screech owl.
Tucking me in, she knotted the corner
of my sheet. That owl stopped cold.
A stronger spell bound Mimi’s house
against harm. She chain-smoked
menthol 100s (Salems, of course)
making towers of glowing ash
that teetered into carpets and couches,
sacks stuffed with worked crosswords.
She drew her power from reaching
elbow deep in the earth—planting
and transplanting, nursing green things
to flourishing. Damn growing zones.
She summoned whatever she sought
to grow from seed, slip, or scion.
Some magic overflowed the tin pails
she kept to catch her famed elixir:
rainwater from thunderstorms.
After squalls, we’d dash between
her chuckling downspouts.
We’d dose her frail dogwoods,
treat the latest sapling grown
from seeds spirited past Customs
with a grin and grandmotherly guile.
My memory conflates the pails’
fish-belly hue with the water’s power
—fading like a fresh-caught fish.
II. Cruel Magic
Mimi taught my sister to read palms
the summer she turned ten.
One Sunday, driving home
from church in a vast Oldsmobile,
Emily sat up front, seatbelt cinched
across her skinny hips, dark hair
shimmering to her shoulders. She read
her namesake’s palm at a stop-light:
It says here we should have an aunt.
In the breathless car, Mimi told us
how she’d lost a daughter.
This was her cruelest magic: surviving
—even when she no longer meant to.
She outlived her mean-drunk ex-husband,
her coven of bridge-playing widows,
and her only child. Weeks before
her funeral, my sister heard her
curse herself for not dying sooner.
But Mimi’s not quite gone. Whenever
she wants to weigh-in, we catch a whiff
of menthol, then the desk she left us
pops and groans. I’m waiting for it
to share its secrets like her giant car.
I stomped its squishy brakes
on the way to have it serviced
before we gave it to her sitter,
and summoned a supernatural gift
from under the seat: a pint bottle
of bourbon whose gold-fringed label
and amber liquid glowed in the sun.
What I Knew
We were brothers—wrestling
the long, taut line between
rivalry and devotion: Who could
jump farther, climb higher, fall harder?
Who would invent the next game
just dangerous enough to be fun?
We were boys—struggling to grow
into our outsized confidence.
Older, my job was to know better.
Instead, I made a bow from a lattice slat,
notched wooden dowels for arrows,
snipped fins from sliver-gray duct tape.
We took turns shooting over each other
until the blunt tip raised a purple welt.
I apologized over and over, and as soon
as you stopped crying, you swore
not to tell. But Mom knew already—
before the dark spot bloomed
into a vast, grackle-black shiner
that took weeks to fully fade.
At nine, an allergic reaction burnt
every bit of you to scab or blister.
You spiked a fever so high the hospital
packed your head in ice to keep
your brain from baking. I remember
your red eyes ringed with fear,
their sheen of tears. Dad summoned
a procession of doctors who bled you,
poked and scoped you, all in the name
of doing no harm, because fixing things
(even if by main-strength and awkwardness)
was how our father showed he cared.
When we were teenagers, he took us fishing
as the Gulf shook off the last of a storm.
Hours we pitched between whitecaps,
though we knew nothing would bite.
When a rogue wave tossed the boat,
a three-inch hook swung free and bit deep
into the meat of your pale forearm.
This time you didn’t cry, not even
when Dad fetched the rusty bait-pliers.
You just looked at me with wide, sad eyes
that said how sick you were of love that hurt,
and I knew to turn the boat around.
Hailing from Eugene Walter's Kingdom of Ghosts and Monkeys, John Miller was sent so frequently to look up words as a kid he toted a dictionary to supper. His poems have appeared in: Poetry South, Anti-Heroin Chic, and elsewhere. Paper Nautilus Press published his chapbook, Heat Lightning, in 2017.