Ralph J. Mills Jr.: Three poems

American Poetry Review, The, Jan 1995 by Mills, Ralph J Jr

11/92

bent

to bag up

leaves-

starlings

above on a

porch, in vines

pick

the blue

fruits-

there's

a corner lit

all over:

grass

spears, sun

runs along

them,

an

incandescence-

roof-high

honey locust, the crab

apple, birch

leaf

lives

shaken out,

the air

emptier

FOG INLAND

fog inland : these

isolate thickets-

steady

drip off eaves,

the black iron of

fire

ladders-

window's lifted

to rain, both hands

flat on its sill

there's wet

flashing where each

knotty ash, slick

length of maple

yields a

little to wind-

breathe

in, out

with them

& once

again in-

PLUM/STICKS

plum

sticks

nearly

straight up-

vines on this

stone balustrade

the same

: wide open

leaves

catch a day's

drizzle

tap/beat

errant

water music from porch

gutter, trees,

out of the

clouds-

Ralph J. Mills, Jr.'s most recent books are nine poems, Tel-Let, 1993 and A Window in the Air, Moyer Bell, 1993. He teaches at the University of Illinois at Chicago.