Tag: Joe Mills

Joe Mills: “Skeletons in the Waffle House”

Posted on by asitoughttobemagazine 
Skeletons in the Waffle House

 If you get there and the Waffle House is closed? That's really bad...
                — Craig Fugate, Former Head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency 

When the trick or treating is over,
we end up here, as we usually do 
after a work shift, a dance, a date.  

It’s comforting to know exactly 
what we’re going to get, no matter 
who we are at the moment, a skeleton, 
ghost, jilted lover, single parent.  

The staff doesn’t care. They’ve seen it all 
year after year. The faces and bodies 
and costumes change; the coffee doesn’t. 

So, when we go towards the light, perhaps
we shouldn’t be surprised if we discover
it’s a Waffle House sign, the first place
to open after an emergency or disaster.

About the Author: A faculty member at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts, Joseph Mills has published several collections of poetry, most recently “Bodies in Motion: Poems About Dance.”

Image Credit: Dvortygirl “Closeup of a homemade waffle” Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons. CC BY-SA 3.0

Joe Mills: “The Scientist After the Operation”

Posted on by asitoughttobemagazine 
The Scientist After the Operation

A couple weeks after the operation, 
he finally can sit outside,
under the enormous black walnut tree
that hasn’t yet succumbed to a storm
although it loses limbs each time.
He holds in his lap a biography 
of Gregor Mendel, the monk 
who cross-bred plants 
and discovered genetic inheritance.

At one point, he had thought about
the church as a career. His mother had
suggested it would be a good place
for someone with his “proclivities,”
a comment so complicated he kept
returning to the statement for years
trying to determine if it was caring,
Machiavellian or something else.
He had studied science instead.

She doesn’t know he’s sick.
They haven’t talked since the wedding 
when the state finally allowed him 
and Greg to be a legal couple,
and yet, this was when 
his grandmother began talking 
openly to him about relationships 
in the months before her death. 
Some things skip a generation. 
Some things never get passed down. 

He sees Greg glancing out 
the kitchen window, checking
to make sure he’s okay,
awake, still alive,
and he waves the book
to reassure his partner,
like a preacher with a bible

About the Author: A faculty member at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts, Joseph Mills holds the Susan Burress Wall Distinguished Professorship in the Humanities. He has published seven volumes of poetry, most recently Bodies in Motion. His collection This Miraculous Turning was awarded the North Carolina Roanoke-Chowan Award for Poetry for its exploration of race and family.

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Image Credit: Edvard Munch “Landowner in the Park” (1903)