Love Pirates

By Joseph Millar Joseph Millar

I follow with my mouth the small wing of muscle

under your shoulder, lean over your back, breathing

into your hair and thinking of nothing. I want

to lie down with you under the sails of a wooden sloop

and drift away from all of it, our two cars rusting

in the parking lot, our families whining like tame geese

at feeding time, and all the bosses of the earth

cursing the traffic in the morning haze.

They will telephone each other from their sofas

and glass desks, with no idea where we could be,

unable to picture the dark throat

of the saxophone playing upriver, or the fire

we gather between us on this fantail of dusty light,

having stolen a truckload of roses

and thrown them into the sea.

Source: Overtime (Eastern Washington University Press, 2001)

Biography

Poet Joseph Millar grew up in western Pennsylvania and was educated at Penn State and the Johns Hopkins University, where he earned an MA in poetry writing. He worked as a commercial fisherman and telephone repairman for more than 20 years, and his accessible narrative poems, influenced by the work of poets Philip Levine and James Wright, often take working life as a means of engaging themes of class, family, and romantic love. . . .

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