Michelle McMillan-Holifield

POETRY

Dry Bones

“Dry Bones” read by Michelle McMillan-Holifield.

Golden Shovel poem after Robert Frost*

The mirror puckers; with rancor I
render parched what stares back. Would I ever have
it in me, leaping, to not pluck the paracord, let it
become a me-massacre? There is such slump in me
& my crying is the shape of a limp: so much
hip-dipping I have one flank dune-sunk; I am nearer
to smothering. If this is despair, take me home.
I don’t know how to charm, how to
give out grace like miniature chocolates. I scare
easily. That is, I scare others. But mostly myself.
I have absolutely no grace with
my own failures. So brow-thrashed, I incessantly give my mind its lashings. My
my my: how self-important those sounds. Lord, of my own
free will, I cup the last bit of sand I scooped from my bone-desert,
let it cascade into Your hand, ask You to bring me back from those million lost places.

*based on the last two lines of “Desert Places” by Robert Frost

Long Road Home

“Long Road Home” read by Michelle McMillan-Holifield.

In the gloaming, dust settles into the breast of Southern ground —
newborn trusting its mother to be there in the morning.

Wild parsley mists confection over fields, hums a fragrant sound
like molecules in heat, frequent rivulets of song: an earthy warning.

And what of the seed covetous like pressed flowers for a thimbleful of dew?
How forgiving it is of the footfalls upon it. And how it worships the giver of rain.

And what of the Louisiana mother, that topography of both grief-baked bread and bayou
whose footing is now rooted across the river, that muddy refrain?

And what of the songlets on the mudbank? What of the anthem’s hook
that tugs her back to shore? What of kudzu breaking

out over the long road home? What of the father? What of the baptismal brook
where — heads dipped under — father, mother, daughter come alive quaking?

What of the fish that fed a family year upon year? What of the fish
that fed thousands? And of the bread that — broken — multiplied

until all were full? What if, more than the wish
to be fed, those on the shore just wanted Him, magnified?

What if you found yourself in the Delta dust or along that Riverbank —
murmuration of heat rising like cicadas’ praise — reciting your own love song to God?

Prayer: For Joy, Even Its Brevity

“Prayer: For Joy…” read by Michelle McMillan-Holifield.

The mind has its own
anatomy. Under fluorescence microscopy,
forked synapses echo the terrible
crook of dead trees
cusping toward decay. Grief is funny
the way it
molds deep
and is diligent:
pillow deboned of feathers; inwardly falling and also falling away.
Joy sometimes seems a myth,
a slender gleam from someone else’s storyline.
Forgive me, Lord,
the mold-deep anatomy
of grief, the soft growling into the moss of pillow.
Forgive my mind
its falling away.
Forgive my praise
its long decay.

Michelle McMillan-Holifield is a Southern poet who also pens short fiction, creative non-fiction, and book reviews. She is a Best of the Net and Pushcart nominee and was longlisted for the Dzanc Poetry Prize. Find her work in Bear Review, Nelle, The Main Street Rag, and Whale Road Review.

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Image: At the Mirror (1914) by Ludvig Karsten, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.