Mn poetry: ‘Y’ by Leslie Adrienne Miller
Leslie Adrienne Miller is the author of six collections of poetry; her most recent release is titled simply "Y." A Professor of English at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Miller explores motherhood and child development, informed by both science and linguistics.
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Miller reads Thursday night at SubText in St. Paul, along with fellow poets Roseann Lloyd and Kate Lynn Hibbard. Here's the title poem from Miller's latest collection:
Y
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Perhaps it's a thread that needs to be pulled,
a single stitch caught in the crux.
Whole word in French and Spanish,
vertical axis of Cartesian three
loaning its fragile branch to a boy
in theory. On y va. Let's go There.
What happens to unrepaired sequences
in subsequent generations? Semivowel,
blown umbrella, arrow reversed in wind,
frizzy blot of genetic code directing the symphony
of a trillion sperm, a single Y . . . might fold over,
line up these similar patches of genetic sequence,
and then accidentally delete everything
that lies in between. Je est un autre.
If the face is a christening in flesh,
the boy of him is its opposite,
raising the tent of bones in which
he will harbor all the starry anomalies
that a knowledge of God cannot undo.
- "Y" by Leslie Adrienne Miller, from her collection of the same name, published by Graywolf Press. Reprinted here with permission from the publisher.