
Tomas Tranströmer Comes to Ohio. Poems by Robert Miltner, selected by Ron Mohring as Number Two in Volume Thirteen of our Summer Kitchen Chapbook Series.
Release date: July 25, 2025 [49 copies]
24 pages
$12.00
Cover: Natalya Kiseleva, airbrush on cotton, 55 x 71 cm,1927-29. Russian Museum of Decorative Arts, Moscow.
Robert Miltner is the author of fifteen poetry/prose poetry chapbooks, including Against the Simple (Wick Poetry Center Ohio Chapbook Award), Eurydice Rising (Red Berry Editions Summer Poetry Chapbook award), and Horse Skull Moon (SurVision Press/James Tate Poetry prize); as well as three full-length poetry/prose poetry collections: Hotel Utopia (New Rivers Press Poetry award), Orpheus & Echo (National Poetry Series finalist), and Always the Geography Leans in on Me (Press 53 Poetry Prize finalist) forthcoming from MadHat Press.
Turning Over the Garden
When a quake, shovel, shift,
or tectonic plate causes a rift
we stare into earth’s dark heart.
We see what it is: serious intent,
specific forms of foreshadowing,
the next step in the only sequence.
Eventually we will be clutched tight
as a diary shoved into an obscure
pocket, kept as secure as a secret.
We’ll become un-blooming bulbs,
the half of the tree no one sees,
our movements only horizontal.
With any shovelful a farmer turns,
an inference; each time plows till,
deeper implications get unearthed.
We toil on, keeping topsoil deep,
tenant farmers indebted to time,
hands holding tight to the ground.
[ Our thanks to Birminghan Poetry Review for first publishing this poem ]
- Limited edition: 24 copies.
- Order your copy here. Thank you for supporting this poet.