by James Miller
Chilean Seizure
We flew to Calama,
rented a car and drove through the desert,
joined the tour in four languages.
Jefferson, our guide, grew up in Detroit—
part-time.
His Spanish now swarmed with tiny shrimps,
alight
in Atacama’s perfect pools.
A thin breath off the mountain
woke that bruised blue wet.
In English, Jefferson loved to say
“stable ecosystem,”
each word
speared by a single flamingo
feather.
He showed us the birds
arrayed in briny shallows,
feeding their color.
He waited for our fingers
to trace crusts of salt on the shore.
I wanted
to wake you
before one a.m.,
to say
it is time for us to leave on foot.
We have enough water
for the work. It will be worth
the chill before sunrise,
and the sweat
as we near
noon.
Choose
a border
crossing.
North to Peru,
east to Bolivia.
Doesn’t matter which.
Before
I could speak, you turned
in your sleep, wheezing
with altitude.
I left my body,
for a time. Visited
the dusty cats
in our tourist village.
Learned
to lick steady till coats shine.
Sat patiently with the spirit
of fleas.
There was Jefferson,
crouched on a stoop
with a cigarette. Reggae
low through his window.
Songs of rent, cities
slicked with cheap
rain.
James Miller is a native of the Texas Gulf Coast. He is published in Best Small Fictions 2021 (Sonder Press) and the Marvelous Verses anthology (Daily Drunk Press). Recent pieces have appeared in Sugar House Review, Door is a Jar, JMWW, Dunes Review, Psaltery & Lyre, CV2, and The Inflectionist Review. Follow on Twitter @AndrewM1621. Website: jamesmillerpoetry.com.