Unction, Cobblestones, City I Dream
Red flowers, red fruits,
people made of ashes,
fires on black waters,
fires left by the copper dead.
Chains drag the city streets.
I have loved.
I work at night.
I work at night like lovers.
I work at strapping words to fire
and wrap what I make in red muslin.
Copper the night.
Saffron the tasks of my tongue.
Tourists and street dancers spark
like cobblestones, which iridesce
as though street were copper and flower stigmas
and fell like sparks from the balconies.
Devon Miller-Duggan has published poems in Rattle, Margie, Christianity and Literature, Gargoyle, Massachusetts Review, and Spillway. She teaches poetry writing at the University of Delaware. Her books include Pinning the Bird to the Wall (Tres Chicas Books, 2008), Alphabet Year, (Wipf & Stock, 2017), and The Slow Salute, Lithic Press Chapbook Competition, 2018).
