Settlers
“You won’t be bathroom or kitchen
conscious” says Mrs. Shanley” because
you come from Bermuda.” She herself
a Brit understood the reluctance to
renovate. American kitchens look
like a rocket ship could be launched
from them. That missile with fumes
trolling the sky like a tooth with
trailing roots ready to devour space.
The earliest inhabitants were called
settlers, so glad after the hiccupping
seas about to convulse and spew
them out, that to be still was enough,
even if Mohegan Indians sought to
permanently pin their corpses to
the ground with a well-aimed arrow.
Tinkerbell
The young Bermudian squeezes
his saltine sandwich like a toy
until the peanut butter and jelly
leaks through the cracker holes,
the springs poking out of an over-
worn mattress discarded around
the care center he is in. His mother
pushes a cart out from Piggly Wiggly,
his baby sister lies in, surrounded
by bagged food, behind the metal
bars that keep their mother, Jacinda
in a daily cage. Post and Kellog’s
feed the need for a merriment with
plastic trinkets inside brightly
coloured boxes. Corn Flakes,
Cheerios sugar sweetened as if
white light coated by Tinkerbell.
As if an adrenalin rush could fairy-
tale an existence, not make bodies
swell, plodding and earthbound.
Airbag
The night time whistling frogs
can be heard on Somerset Road
where a yellow police tape cordons
off a crime scene. The familiar
to Bermudians chimes know
no island boundaries as the male
inflates and deflates a throat
air sac to attract a hearing mate.
Like a gentle rain, sounds soften
news as a policewoman faces
the camera with not enough
information to satisfy the black
white text of The Royal Gazette’s
print. I think of bullfrogs I ran
over with my teenage Mobylette,
squashed a Buddha body until
guts released a white bubble,
like an emergency car airbag,
the death speech blurb of
a toady amphibian. The drive
by shooting in Sandy’s merciless.
Streets full of sirens distress
a semitropical night, the blur
of red lights bleed blood
as ambulances hasten by,
amidst the gleep! gleep! gleep!
a repetitive elixir of chanting
dressing our fresh wounds.
Tropes
This time on the scalp in the hairline
of my part, the parting of ways,
my earlier worship of sun,
cultish, now with due respect.
Tiny enough to be an Asian Ladybug
politely appearing with its mandarin
cap. So quiet. I reline and close my
MINI sunroof, block light haloing my face.
The glassy top, a mirror reflecting
back to the sun’s vanity, now sealed,
a shield to bounce it back like
an unopened letter to a lover.
Remember once more the force
nature is although I try to bury
heat in the cool spread of a wave
pouring over me like a mother
waters down a child to rid them
of dirt. The tropics so full of tropes,
earth cooked up, craters crack with
fire inside like a bloody basil cell.
Bite
The bleeding basil cell on my scalp,
a red, red lipstick mark, kissed by the sun.
I slathered sun block over my pink pre-teen
body, icing on a cake for the sun to devour.
The crosshair stitches on my head, like
a hickey, a love bite as the skin heals.
About the Author
Nancy Anne Miller is a Bermudian poet with twelve collections including Selected Poems (Valley Press, U K, 2024). Missing Hurricanes is forthcoming. (Valley Press U.K., 2026). She is published internationally in journals such as Edinburgh Review, Poetry Ireland Review, The Moth, Salzburg Review, Agenda, Stand, Magma, Ambit, The Fiddlehead, Dalhousie Review, The Caribbean Writer, PREE among many others. She has an M.Litt. in Creative Writing from Univ. of Glasgow. She is a MacDowell Fellow, and Bermuda Arts Council Grant recipient.
