by James Miller

You use this red plastic outline of a turnip
to press out dozens of turnip-shaped cookies.

Gifts for the cast, your singers. In the show,
the vegetable suggests a welcome weight

of love. Yet you will not eat real ones.
Each time we speak of turnips, you say

they taste like betrayal. Soft pale mush
that looked friendly enough

on your childhood plate. Safe
as your beloved mashed potatoes.

I hardly think of them.
I hardly think of blindness.

Flecks of tar, dancing
on my margins.

I want to stir the batter.
Pour it out.

James Miller is a native of the Texas Gulf Coast, now settled in Oklahoma City. His work has appeared in Best Small Fictions (2021), South Florida Poetry Journal, Hopkins Review, The Fourth River, San Pedro River Review, Heavy Feather Review, The Atlanta Review, North Dakota Quarterly, Psaltery & Lyre, and elsewhere. Follow on Bluesky @jandrewm.bsky.social. Website: jamesmillerpoetry.com.