Three Poems by Wayne Miller

The American Middle Class

Built in the early twentieth century,
the barn stood across from where
the subdivision’s fences
pressed against the field.

We carried pliers and chainsaws,
crowbars and wrecking hammers.
We drove right up, bouncing
through the knee-high weeds.

First we tore off the stuck doors,
then the box stalls. Our sorted
scraps of wood grew into piles.
When I pulled loose a long

board from the sheathing,
the barn’s century-old shadow
came apart. We dismantled it in strips
until the pale, compacted dirt

was flooded with sun. The air
we’d opened there stayed sweet
and damp, even when a breeze
blew through. Next morning

Garrett went up on the ladder
to pry down the rafters and purlins.
Then the barn was gone—
driven in shifts for two days

to Barnwood Recycling, who sold
the lumber to RiNo Development
for $5.75 a board foot. Clearly
the barn was not a metaphor.

It became the grayed interiors
of three restaurants, two of them
made from shipping containers.
More importantly,

it netted us $14,000,
my third of which helped my wife
and me pay for an IVF treatment—
which is also not a metaphor.

The Invention of the Afterlife

When his friend’s last notes and letters
arrived in a heavy envelope, he found
more than a hundred pages bound
simply with a rubber band. For three hours
he dragged his mind through the strands
of her tight cursive. He was surprised
that he recognized almost none
of the thoughts and events related there.

He’d assumed he would gain a clearer
vision of her lost interior,
but in the end so little was revealed
he decided the reading had barely
counted, even, as reading. It was more
like combing her hair.

The Narcissist

Our boats on the black water, and the lighthouse
swinging its gaze around, its beam
reaching and withdrawing, reaching
and withdrawing. It seemed
as though the whole sea rose up
to that towering eye.
…………………………….It seemed as though
it might have the power
to draw us from our shadows,
to lure us toward the rocks the waves
were breaking hard against. What would we do
if we got there?
…………………….But we were farther
away than we’d supposed—and when that blaze
of light slid briefly across us
it only served to show us to each other.

Wayne Miller is the author of five poetry collections, including Post- (Milkweed, 2016), which won the UNT Rilke Prize and the Colorado Book Award, and We the Jury, which Milkweed will publish in 2021. He teaches at the University of Colorado Denver and serves as editor/managing editor of Copper Nickel.