Life is Long

Dear Duke,

Thank you for submitting to The New Yorker. Although we won’t be carrying your work in the magazine, we are grateful for the opportunity to read and consider it.

Sincerely,

Kevin Young, Poetry Editor

Hannah Aizenman, Associate Poetry Editor

Jan told me it was an honor to hear back from the New Yorker, even if they have farmed the poetry section out to a subsidiary in Montana. She said, there must be something there. I don’t know. I’ve been turned down by tons of poetry magazines, but she is right, the New Yorker never writes back. So there it is. I got to tell you, I really don’t care. Even if they would have published it, I wouldn’t have thought too much about it. I have other fish to fry. I like to read the dictionary and my attention is mostly directed towards cats and the heat and people walking toward me. They all seem scary to me.

I’m not supposed to post anything else on Tin Hats Blog. I implied I wouldn’t. A few people wrote asking if I was dying? Aren’t we all? I assume they mean imminently, but how would I know, even in my condition, which is sketchy, I might live to see the entire earth burn. I was struck by something Joseph Conrad wrote in his second novel. He said, life is long. He also wrote, oh youth, pass the bottle. I think I like the second one better. Anyway, I need to keep going. I just contacted two of my old associates on Mustang Island. I’m twice their age, but I used to tell them that we were equals. I still believe that, but I’m not sure they understand. It has something to do with learning and enduring pain. Making peace with yourself. Even then, I knew they had what it took. I must be a fucking genius.

Their names are Matt and Will. The last time I saw them we shared a beer in my kitchen.

“I Can Hear Her Hands Still”

by Duke Miller

We don’t have much to deal with here, face frowning

Love … I … don’t think so …

Give me another shot, lips pursing

And the bartender did his duty, much like a cat in a box or a cop on the beat

She spoke with her hands and the bartender nodded

He heard her hands over the noise

The poetry of her hands

The way they looked like birds landing and taking off from a lake

How they touched my face as if it was nighttime in a cool forest

Softly sketching silence with fingertips and the flutter of wings

Looking at me like a leaf drifting down to the nose of a motionless buck

We shared drugs that winter on the beach and we swam in the ocean and used the sky for blue water and the waves were clouds and we surfed the animals and cartoon characters

Everything gently coming into the shore, our bodies entwined

Those still moments, the silent moments and they were walls that kept us in

I asked her to read my poetry

She said she couldn’t, it was too much like her hands and my words were a history of her hesitation and misunderstanding and so she would stop after a few sentences and shake her head

No, I can’t

She was a moving magazine illustration

And I soon learned that my words were out of place, timed without a clock, facing backward while marching in a line

Too much like her desperation to speak

Too much like her youth of sadness and so we settled for the drugs and sex and floating upon the clouds

Not a bad way to spend a winter in Thailand, but I never forgot the criticism of her hands and how some words were not for those who could only hear with their eyes