Greatest Lake, Saint of Loss

 Whatever you do, the wheels will break

away. Tomorrow they rusted out yesterday—

you slept with your not-love waiting

for the eleventh floor, wind river running green.

What is a family, an evening your route forks,

the cigarette smoke and shouting wafted

up from the bars below.

Teresa K. Miller is the author of Borderline Fortune (National Poetry Series winner, Penguin, 2021), sped (Sidebrow, 2013), and Forever No Lo (Tarpaulin Sky, 2008) as well as co-editor of Food First: Selected Writings from 40 Years of Movement Building (Food First Books, 2015). A graduate of the Mills College MFA program, she has published poems and essays in ZYZZYVA, AlterNet, Entropy, DIAGRAM, and elsewhere. Originally from Seattle, she tends a mini orchard near Portland, Oregon.