Into the Sea of Shattered Silicate
by Margot Miller © 2006
Threading my way through the fog,
hoping to get home by midnight, negotiating
a blinding curve, a shadow
looms in the headlights, the airbag
explodes. Splintered glass, yellow foils
of polymer, the points
of a buck's rack shredding
every illusion of protection, pinning me
there. The animal's weight
slides to the ground, exhaling
a deep groan; flashes
of shining pain and musky vapor wash
over me, the warm, red flow
of my belly empties
into the sea of shattered silicate
and ash.
Margot Miller holds a Ph.D in French literature from the University of Maryland. She is an independent scholar and occasional lecturer, specializing in contemporary women writers. She is currently writing fiction and memoir as well as teaching French women writers in translation at the Academy of Lifelong Learning, Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum, St. Michaels, MD. Miller divides her time between the Eastern Shore of the Chesapeake Bay and the Okanagan Valley in British Columbia. Her fiction and poetry has appeared in or is currently featured/forthcoming in ChickFlicks Ezine, Write Side Up, A Long Story Short, Subtle Tea, Dispatch, Moonlit Thoughts (dogma publications, UK)