ALICE MILLER
Hope
These days she plays
the piano like a weapon—
she’ll say it’s a burden,
this cumbersome instrument; she feels
like she carries it around
on her shoulders, the weight of wrong
notes, accidentals and pedalling.
On weekdays, he pores over papers
in the archives, and she’ll hammer
at the keys till they gather
some coherence, an atonal
clamour of shining noise. He’s grasping
at threads of past, their passing,
and she’s trying
to create, to conceive
a newness—
but there’s no polite way
to end this predicament:
last to the impasse
loses.
Alice Miller grew up in Mahina Bay, Eastbourne. She currently lives in Iowa City, where she attends the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop. Alice was the 2006-2007 Glenn SchaefferFellow, and she will complete her MFA in poetry in May 2008. She has an MA in Creative Writing from Victoria University’s International Institute of Modern Letters. Her poems appear or are forthcoming in Zoland, Kaupapa: New Zealand poets, world issues; Notnostrums; Turbine; and Sport.
Miller comments: ‘This is an older poem, but my poetry continues to hammer at the keys, to race itself, and throw itself up against the impasse.’
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