translated and adapted from the Polish of Agnieszka Ginko
I can’t fill your shoes
so there they go a-
round the world.
Who’ll ever find them?
But your rings
fit like gloves:
pearl-green and silver,
gold—
they put them
in an envelope
with your name.
You liked me in your rings, Mama:
one is like the moon in blue,
and another pretends to be a flower
to amuse you.
Stephen Paul Miller’s poetry has appeared in Best American Poetry 2023 and 1994, the Bloomsbury Anthology of Contemporary Jewish American Poetry, Contemporary Surrealist and Magical Realist Poetry: An International Anthology, and other journals and anthologies. He is the author of eight books of poetry; two critical works, including The Seventies Now (Duke University Press); and he co-edited two collection, including, with Daniel Morris, Radical Poetics and Secular Jewish Culture. He has been a Senior Fulbright Scholar and is presently a Pushcart Prize for poetry nominee. Miller is a Professor of English at St. John’s University in New York City.