Letter to Body Made Breath

Long rivulet of me
strikes the ram’s horn.

My name hymns
god-bright in the lungs:

Loosen me,
revenant. Your absence

caused me to crawl in
the low fields

like a woman in war.
All that labor.

I’ve made a myth of it.
Dress billow-whips

my knees. Breathe:
body arch. Breathe:

body flutter. Breathe:
we linger. At the end

of anything, a lift.
Believe or leave

a breath—

Carly Joy Miller‘s work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Adroit Journal, Blackbird, Boston Review, Gulf Coast, and elsewhere. She has been nominated for a Pushcart and was a finalist for the Stadler Fellowship. She is a contributing editor for Poetry International and a founding editor of Locked Horn Press.
*Image: Utagawa, Toyokuni; Hanaarashi. Courtesy of Library of Congress.
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