Some Inconvenient Poems, Miles Liss

Do you know where you’re going, young man? “Out West,” he said. “To the land that never knew me. Perhaps the sun will be clearer there, and the grapes sweeter.” 

 

And so he took that long journey, traveling across America, but all he saw was a vast emptiness, and the emptiness bothered him. He wanted to turn around, but it was too late. The West had sucked him in.

 

Green pastures gave way to deadly desert and dry. Even the air seemed to be conspiring against him. Soon, he arrived in California. He gazed out at the ocean from the cliffs of the Pacific Coast Highway. He could sense his own decay, which was the decay of the land.

 

All that he had seen, which he once believed to be miraculous, had faded. Faded away, like the whitecapped waves. It was a second adolescence, this grave awakening. The land had been conquered for no other reason than to conquer. His soul had been lost for no other reason than all American souls are lost.

 

No promise of California gold could change that. The clouds were cloaked in sorrow, and in their sorrow, they rolled above the washing waves, threatening rain.

 

Some Inconvenient Poems is a rant, a cry, a warning. It’s a portrait of an America consumed by its own depravity. Fed by greed and a hunger for world domination, America has become a shadowy shell of the shiny beacon of hope it once was. The false promise of a greater good has been corrupted by a malignancy beyond repair. The speaker in this collection bears witness to the metamorphosis of a democracy into a country on the brink of civil war.

Conferences and residencies:

Tupelo Press Poetry Residency at MASSMoca—summer 2017.

Breadloaf Writers Conference—summer 2011. Studied poetry with National Book Award winning poet Arthur Sze and Yale Series of Younger Poets winner Arda Collins.

Breadloaf Writers’ Conference—summer of 2006.  Studied fiction with Percival Everett.

 

Publications (online and print):

Essays—essay published online at Past Ten.

Fiction— Penny Dreadful, Black Petals, Songs of Innocence, Out of Line, and Yuan Yang: A Journal of Hong Kong and International Writing.

Poetry—Atlanta Review, Gargoyle, The Normal School, Spiritus Journal, Blue Moon Literary & Arts Review, Broad River Review, Regarding Arts & Letters, Progenitor Literary & Arts Review, Poetica Magazine, Poets for Living Waters, Meat for Tea, Twisted Vine Literary & Arts Review, Common Ground Review, Falling Star Magazine, Sheepshead Review, The San Pedro River Review and Cacti Fur, 'An Intelligent Kind' in Journal published by death of workers whilst building skyscrapers.

Translations—two poems by the Mexican poet Melbin Cervantes translated in Loch Raven Review (am currently at work translating his chapbook, Las huellas que dejo el silencio). Four poems by Mexican poet David Anuar translated for his 2022 Fall Residency, International Writing Program at University of Iowa.

Poetry Anthologies—a new poem is forthcoming in the anthology Without a Doubt: poems illuminating faith, published by New York Quarterly. 

 

Exhibitions:

Artwork has been exhibited in Del Ray Artisans Gallery (Del Ray, Virginia) and the Torpedo Factory (Alexandria, Virginia).

 

Awards:

2021 Kurt Brown Prize in Poetry, sponsored by the Association of Writers and Writing Programs (AWP).

DASHing Words in Motion Poetry Contest—winning poem, “Evaporation” appeared on buses and trolleys in the City of Alexandria.