Public Interest by Arlyn Miller | Poetry

Poetry – Issue 4 | April 2009

Public Interest

by Arlyn Miller

The photographers will turn off
their lights, fold up the legs
of their tripods, pack up
black cameras into black bags,
zip them closed, return
lenses to their black cases,
snap them shut.

The photographers, each in turn,
through the back lit narrow doorway
will retreat from what
was never theirs to enter.

And what, for the photographic instant,
was declared emblematic, metaphoric—
will go back to being the single
thing it was all along.

One home,
one clay wall,
one satchel,
one calendar displaying
one torn month.
One frame containing
one life photographed.
One tin spoon, having stirred
one tin pot, then entering
one mouth.

Arlyn has published her poems in Calyx, Jewish Women’s Literary Annual, Freefall , and the 2008 Her Mark Journal. She travels widely through the lives and imaginations of 6-18 year-olds with whom she works teaching poetry in schools and in the community through Poetic License, Inc., which Arlyn founded and directs.

Read our current issue, Issue 4 | April 2009:

Literary Bohemian

Poetry – Issue 4 | April 2009

Public Interest

by Arlyn Miller

About the author

Read our current issue, Issue 4 | April 2009:

Poetry

Postcard prose

Travelogue