Puppet

• after Ilya Kaminsky

We lived north of the future

where prey is a verb

spoken by stock characters

who misunderstood

I can pray inside my body

to a preening predator

while covered with leaves

from a vine of sophistry.

A man is peeled like an apple—

if you don’t know who

the mark is then it’s you

bound and dragged

to a place further than silence

as trolls post trigger words

to pull your mouth open

and your right arm up.

—

Wayne L. Miller is a poet from Northern New Jersey. His work has been published in Arc Poetry Magazine, The Paterson Literary Review, LIPS, Statorec, Edison Literary Review, Exit 13, Narrative Northeast, Turtle Island Quarterly, and various other journals and anthologies. Sometimes what he writes is not poetry and never can be. Visit his website at https://waynelmiller.info/