THE HOME

Halloween, 1920

By William Miller

My great-grandmother, part Indian,
daughter of an Irish slave owner
the devil took on the third try,
set an extra place at the supper table.

Before masks, treats, plastic pumpkins,
she said this night was special—
the dead walked freely—her people
believed that, their people

before them. Her grown children
made fun of her, scoffed at
“a half-breed crazy”. No one
believed in things like that anymore.

She put cornbread, greens, fat back
on a tin plate, pulled back
the handmade wooden chair.
And she waited for her mother,

a child she lost to a twisted cord,
even her wicked father who always
left muddy boot prints on the floor,
to sit down, eat, come home.

William Miller's most recent poetry collection, The Crow Flew Between Us, was published by Kelsay Books in 2019. His poems have appeared in The Penn Review, The Southern Review, Shenandoah, Prairie Schooner, Folio, and West Branch.  He lives and writes in the French Quarter of New Orleans.