Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Leaving Kansas
    Leaving Kansas
    Leaving Kansas
    Ebook28 pages13 minutes

    Leaving Kansas

    By Brett Clay Miller

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    Prose poems and vignettes. "I am cast away of my own accord, and no hostage, acutely aware that when coupled, age and what-ifs are twice as excruciating."

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBrett Clay Miller
    Release dateDec 6, 2011
    ISBN9781465797353
    Leaving Kansas
    Author

    Brett Clay Miller

    Born in Kansas City, Brett Clay Miller is currently enjoying Colorado's magnificent Front Range and trying not to take himself too seriously. He is a locksmith by trade, the father of three and a lover of words and motorcycles.

    Read more from Brett Clay Miller

    Related to Leaving Kansas

    Related ebooks

    Poetry For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      AUSTRALOPITHECA1 & STARMAN2

      Sep 1, 2019

      The countdown to you begyns with me, deere Starman, when I wander, dumbly, deep into a space hospittable to Hunger. Now, all’s desert. No milk in syte. Just pitifull sand, what shushes as it slydes through your hande to rejoin itself. I’d join myself

      7 min read

    • Article

      Any Given Day

      Mar 29, 2021

      Any Given Day
      11 min read

    • Article

      Reports From Near And Far

      Nov 25, 2021

      susanne paola antonetta MY HOMETOWN of Bellingham, Washington, is a last corner of the continental United States, a final chew of land before the long drink of the Pacific. We’re bound to the west by water, to the east by mountain, and twenty miles t

      17 min read

    • Article

      Beautiful In The Distance

      Jun 24, 2019

      Beautiful In The Distance
      10 min read

    • Article

      Two Poems by Phillip B. Williams

      Dec 15, 2017

      The masters are yet dead. Wanting to be human,I tried to rewrite The Waste Land. The canon’s reachcasts ruinous light. The masters’ pens breachthis page where, above, my own hand spectates. Babylonrisen, exorcism in reverse, whose nature upended now?

      6 min read

    • Article

      Cul-de-Sac

      Dec 1, 2021

      That old rage for order: how my father drove a square mouthed mower over-and-back, over-and-back, each row of neatly trimmed grass cut just like he told his barber: boy’s short, regular. O pioneer, taming this joke bit of prairie, no bindweed or dog

      5 min read

    • Article

      Darkness And Light

      Nov 6, 2020

      Darkness And Light
      9 min read

    • Article

      Notes From A Nothing

      Feb 14, 2020

      Notes From A Nothing
      13 min read

    • Article

      Nine Poems

      Jul 1, 2018

      I Blazes travel the state roads. Entire fields ingrained in us—firesa house, a forest, essential in land and soil—set a purpose. II At growing season, leave dead matter aboveground. Future burners—side ditches. Dead matter, new plants—shells that nee

      3 min read

    • Article

      Four Poems

      Jan 1, 2020

      Pallets of bottled water on the back porchwere one evidence of apocalypseor the demise of the way of thingsor lazily written computer code backin the 80s, when I was a boyand the nightly news was just about all the doomwe had stomachs for, whenwere t

      3 min read

    • Article

      Three Poems

      Nov 1, 2021

      That the semi-circular canal is part of my ear,not a style of Venetian waterway arch,I learned mid-air on a Huffy.That bicycles left long out in the rain split.That prepositions are tricky.That I was made part industrious,part lazy-assed. That descri

      3 min read

    • Article

      Turning Tides

      Aug 2, 2022

      Turning Tides
      3 min read

    • Article

      Unlearnable Lessons on My Father’s Deathbed

      Mar 21, 2017

      I was at my father’s side much of the time in his final weeks, a witness to both the gifts and miseries of being near death. Nurses came and went, patient, long-suffering. They sat beside him for hours at a time, dousing spongy lollipops in water and

      5 min read

    • Article

      Nick Laird

      Dec 15, 2017

      I was trying to write like an adult.I had children.I was at the end of something. As I waited at my table by the window for the coffee,I saw that the sirocco had depositeda scrim of dust on the sill overnight,and it was the dark red of powdered blood

      3 min read

    • Article

      Water Believes What We Cannot

      Nov 1, 2020

      I wrote this love letter in the spring, when there was pandemic, which was news, and weather, which was not. Now pandemic has been superseded by police brutality, the American presidential election, and wildfires. The unknowns, the unknowable, accumu

      19 min read

    • Article

      Six Poems

      Feb 28, 2023

      Dear C, At first Virgil’s poem is quite dull; equivocalnames of products at The Container Store: Elfa White Medium Drawer, Mesh NarrowRolling Cart (Medium Solution), Narrow Classic Mesh Box and the number of pirouetting starseach product attained. An

      5 min read

    • Article

      HERNAN BAS New and Recent Work

      Dec 15, 2018

      HERNAN BAS New and Recent Work
      6 min read

    • Article

      Four Poems

      Jul 1, 2022

      The embers of a Thousand YearsUncovered by the HandThat fondled them when they were FireWill stir and understand——from Emily Dickinson’s “1383” Remember when we hurriedourselves into the evening’s sacral blaze: Our coal-covered bridal gownsdrenched i

      6 min read

    • Article

      Spellcheck

      Jan 1, 2019

      Whose history I do not know. I do know I’ve been e-upbraided for my fast and loose spelling of Woden, the god whose last worshipper must have slipped under the sod during the medieval period, somewhere in the 10th century—imagine those bog-soaked des

      5 min read

    • Article

      The Plague Legends

      Dec 1, 2021

      The Plague Legends
      12 min read

    • Article

      Five Sonnets

      Jun 1, 2020

      When I peel potatoes, I put my head down,as if I am still following orders and being loyalto my commander. I feel a connection acrosstime to others putting their heads downin fatigued thought, as if this most naturalact signified living the way I wan

      2 min read

    • Article

      Three Poems

      Sep 1, 2023

      Unlike the churning shit-show-roar of whateverthat was we just left behind, this year, onlinechatter tells me, will be one of contemplationand hope. Maybe. Right now, I’m holding stillthe best I can, having followed once again thissame path to this s

      4 min read

    • Article

      Two Poems

      Nov 1, 2021

      I have an endless appetite for starfruit,for biting my teeth into the universe and spitting outthe space junk, for licking the rings of my favorite planetsand never slicing my tongue. There’s a story I shareabout my birth where angels circle my dead

      2 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for Leaving Kansas

    0 ratings

    0 ratings0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

      Book preview

      Leaving Kansas - Brett Clay Miller

      Leaving Kansas

      By Brett Clay Miller

      Copyright 2012 Brett Clay Miller

      Contents

      A Scab's Pension

      Dressing Down

      Bringing Home the Wrenches

      Waking toward Wednesday

      The Thing about Being My God

      Spring Has Brown Eyes

      Fair Weather Friend

      Blood Runs Cold

      Left on Magnolia

      Building the Perfect Beast

      The Sometimes Girl

      The Editor

      Public Library

      Gridlock Anomalies

      The (Dis)comfort of Strangers

      Matters of Plurality

      The Commerce of Our Passions

      A Proper Jar for Fireflies

      Why I Left the Farm

      Abusing the Transitive Property

      The Stuff of Common Mumblage

      Addicted, White-Collar, Vegetarian Atheist

      Stalking Narcissa

      The South Side of the Turret

      About the Author

      * * *

      A Scab's Pension

      Once certain doorways have been breached, they can never again be fully latched (no matter how fresh the paint). Hard-sell company men wearing tasteful green power-suits over soiled underthings will ever lurk in the warehouse, eavesdropping on your self-talk and rationalizations, silently willing you to ignore the picket line and step back onto the production floor.

      Dressing Down

      Enjoying the preview?
      Page 1 of 1