Poetry Society of SC — All Posts — The Jasper Project

This week's Poet of the People is Tamara Miles. Tamara is a dynamo. She hosts workshops, readings, salons, and poetry walks in state parks. As the president of the Poetry Society of South Carolina. She is busy attempting to visit every corner and every county in South Carolina.

Tamara Miles has been teaching English at the college level for over 25 years. Her poetry has been published in a variety of journals and anthologies, and she has a small event chapbook called Earth Gospel. She was the director of the Writing Studio at Orangeburg-Calhoun Technical College for five years. Spirit Plants Radio hosted her radio show called Where the Most Light Falls, which featured poetry and music. She attended the Sewanee Writers Conference in 2016, and a Rivendell Writers Retreat in 2017 as well as several other festivals and conferences. She has been a featured poet for many events, including at O’Bheal in Cork City, Ireland and at a festival in Devon, England.

Townsend’s Rocky Mountain Hare

(an ekphrastic poem)

Drawn on stone, the Audubon pair sit side

by side and stare, alert to the hawk, one’s long ears

hung back, his mate’s up like a question, one tail

harnessed flat to ground, one hooked to sky,

on the whole designed for speed, earnest

as a schoolboy’s raised hand to his teacher’s

hostile eye --- and after school, the mad dash home

in early summer heat --

jackrabbits, half helpless on the wormwood plain,

white throats thick, markings as signal red as a fawn

or a fresh bruise ---

only their feet fly to where they might hide out

in a hollow, but here they are held still as punctuation

marks that halt a rush of thoughts and hush wild words ---

years I spent in flight, the suspected hazard

unresolved on canvas. A harsh world for the ones

who wait, huddled, for their names to be called,

for the brief lifting upward, before silence.

Tommy’s Dream

Tommy grew on rural land,

away from the city’s clatter.

At seventeen, bruised and battered,

stumbling home, he fell half alive

and could go no further.

He went to bones in a row

of blackberry bushes three miles

from his country door. Blackberry

vines covered his body until his skull

and twenty-five other bony pieces

of him were spotted by a neighbor

searching for dark fruit.

I read about in the newspaper.

I remembered the lake house

I rented, for a year in Heflin, Alabama,

where blackberries grew wild

around a spring, and snakes

that must have been there did not bother

me.

My small worries didn’t matter.

The blackberries grew so rich

and fine that year, boldly black,

and at homes all around the south, juicy-full,

our hands that picked them scratched

and bled in scorching heat to find

and claim them for cobbler served

warm with ice cream.

With these hands,

we made our pleasure. We tasted

what was left of Tommy’s dreams,

sadness spooned through the batter.

In a Dream, My Father

A city at night, a carnival

in neon green just across

the water,

welcoming

Ferris wheel, bridge,

a kind of train or sled

pulled by jackaloxes,

and next a cart of fruit

spilling toward me.

I caught a navel orange,

bruised at the top, studied

it and put it back.

A fancy hall, red-painted

walls; I pushed a man

in a wheelchair toward

a door,

and on the other

side people waited in line,

excited to see the show.

I can’t give you everything,

I said, but I can give you

this,

and in his childlike way

he stared, holding tight

to a stuffed animal

I’d won.

Kitty Hawk, 1903

As boys, the bike-shop brothers

flew their kites and clutched

at guiding strings.

They saw the gathering wind

had blind ambitions,

and witnessed, too, a band

of birds climb toward

culled clouds with ease

as if the sky had called

their names.

Then, in the dreams

that come to boys,

the names they heard above

were theirs – Wilbur wrote

of his obsession as disease.

Always, first, a dream is met

with some suspicion, both

within the self and out.

What crafted wings

could bear the two to clouds?

Their parents winked --

others must have laughed

out loud, offered nothing

but derision.

Now, in December,

to the Outer Banks

they came, past the seven

hundredth glide, and for twelve

seconds rose on powered wings

because they were more

brave than proud

and sought true freedom

more than fame.

Battle of Musgrove Mill Poetry Reading & Contest - June 28th 10 am - noon

Al Black Celebrates 1000th Poetry Event March 13th at Cool Beans

Congratulations, Al!

Poetry of the People Featuring TAMARA MILES