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American Epic
John Milkereit

We are not an unhappy couple

running along Peachtree Street to the church.

We say a little prayer where a car struck

Margaret Mitchell. We breeze past the white dogwoods,

the blue-black crows, up Heartbreak Hill at the hospital

while keys jangle in shoelaces. We want

a different narrative, one where we sleep on a train

only stopping for buffaloes. I admit my infidelities

in the dome car. I ignore you for vistas of empty fields

even if you dress in a black, low-cut, velvet gown.

I suppose farmers and other military officers

will court you, but we survive on cucumber slices

and honey from a jam jar. You give birth to a son

I never love until I yank open the muslin curtains.

I run into the forest. I find a giant oak felled by lightning.

—
John Milkereit lives in Houston, Texas, working as a mechanical engineer, and he has completed an MFA in Creative Writing at the Rainier Writing Workshop. His work has appeared in various literary journals, including The Ekphrastic Review, Panoply, Naugatuck River Review, and San Pedro River Review. His next full-length collection of poems, A Comfortable Place with Fire, is forthcoming.

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