What Canvas

by JC Miller

this threadbare happiness that warps the day
like fake leather picked off the desk chair.

I hunger for the new skin of babies. They belong
to someone else, their eyes alert, trusting smiles

to seed the air with kisses.  I shrink into my decent life.
The chair louvers me up, not completely useless.

Trees double down to shadow grass. What opulence
is loss, this wrinkled skin, these raised veins rivering

my hand.  Soon, leaves will crush under stroller wheels.
Chrysanthemums will pock the walk with rust.

JC Miller’s poetry has appeared in Iron Horse Literary Review, The Summerset Review, cahoodaloodaling, Mojave River Review, and Pittsburgh Poetry Review among others. A nominee for Best New Poets and Best of the Net, she was awarded a poetry fellowship from the Delaware Division of the Arts, and was a finalist in the 2017 Red Wheelbarrow Poetry Contest and for the 2018 Florence C. Coltman Award.  She lives in Wilmington, Delaware.