JK Miller

FOREVER CHEMICALS

I suspect something in the garden
is killing me. Pulling out the dead
stalks on hands and knees. Dried
larkspur pods pour over black grains.
Poppies' big hard ovaries shake. Salt
and pepper bombs burst. Take cover.
Anoint me valley,
table, cup. Me thinks purple
as in waves of grain and deep-sleep
red—-as in fields of dorothy—
neurotoxic psoriasis.
By what authority do the finest monkey
fingers feel groin and wrist,
elbow and thigh,
aches and pains
and cause
the disjointed pearls
from lips to slip
to grounds?

Did you say let them?


JK's YouTube reading of "Forever Chemicals"


JK confesses: "I like to garden. In my garden there are larkspur and poppy flowers. When they die back, I pull them. They are so beautiful together, purple and pink, but they are both toxic to humans if mishandled. In this poem, it was fun to think about how toxicity could work."

JK Miller is a former third-grade dual language teacher. He lives on the edge of cornfields. He started submitting for publication in 2025. He is the first-place winner in the modern sonnet category of the 2025 Helen Schaible International Sonnet Contest. His chapbook Bicycling Poems was published in October, 2025. A second chapbook, Rye & I was published in January, 2026. His poems have also been recently published, or will be, in shoegaze literary, Midsummer Dream House, Harrow House, Autumn Sky Poetry Daily, THEMA, Rat's Ass Review, 50-Word Stories, Verse-Virtual, Paratextos, Amethyst Review, The Poetry Lighthouse, Adelaide Literary Magazine, Up North Lit, Eunoia Review, Borderless, As Surely as the Sun, ANTAE, Plato's Caves, Tap Into Poetry, 20:05, The Soliloquist, The Metaworker, Press Pause Press, and The Rush. In the summer of 2025 he rode his bicycle from his home to his son's house to see his newborn grandson. It was 1,335 miles.