The Zingara Project

Tag: The 150th Reride of The Pony Express

  • Camel Coat by Ronda Miller

    I don my recently dyed, twice retired,
    rebuilt, retro camel coat.  My hands,
    rigid from cold, neck pressed warm
    against cloth once fashionably puke green.
    Ears like TV antennas are alert for
    sounds of sandy crunch on cement steps.
    The ones that made the flats
    of my palms and knees bleed
    when I tripped over my own
    damn feet, shoelace untied.
    There was no pride in that
    humbling free fall.
    My awkward stance sucked all
    thoughts of romance like paint
    needed to upscale the
    rusted white lattice rail he used
    to scale.  I listen, watch, wait,
    impatience my best know trait.
    I’m too cold to move and I’m
    counting on a full moon tonight.

    —

    Ronda Miller, a Life Coach whose clients have lost someone to suicide or homicide, has poetry at The Smithsonian Art Institute, transformed as art, online, in BEGIN AGAIN: 150 Kansas Poems, To The Stars Through Difficulties, Going Home: Poems from My Life, and in documentary The 150th Reride of The Pony Express. She is a Kansas girl.

  • Be Still by Ronda Miller

    It is here, among the dust, discarded
    books, some read, many not, plots
    remembered, most forgotten.

    It is here, behind the
    wall, encased through time,
    held by a mind visibly gone
    astray with vision blank to
    the present, not to his presence.

    It is here, susurration into the
    night, Russian accent,
    speech thick, participles
    dangle heavy in air,
    suspended vibrations of laughter,
    tears, love, arguments,
    apologies, hellos, goodbyes.

    It is here, among the rafters,
    rattles her breastbone,
    light, musical, harsh, scolding.

    “Hear me still!” he demands.

    “Here, be still,” she replies,
    pats the warm space next to
    herself, drifts asleep to his voice
    as it whispers in her ear;
    her voice urgent in response.

    —

    Ronda Miller, a Life Coach whose clients have lost someone to suicide or homocide, has poetry at The Smithsonian Art Institite, transformed as art, online, in ‘BEGIN AGAIN: 150 Kansas Poems’, ‘To The Stars Through Difficulties’, ‘Going Home: Poems from My Life’, and in documentary ‘The 150th Reride of The Pony Express’. She is a Kansas girl.