“Job’s Children” and “Gender Unicorn”
by William Miller
“Job’s Children”
Below that blue-black sky,
a goat-hair tent collapsed
by a sudden desert storm,
they died together.
A faith test under Satan’s
wings, planned to
seem like an accident,
the storm began in God’s eye.
They dreamed, like all children
dream, they’d grow old,
waists thickened by milk
and wild honey.
Blessed by two fathers,
they set the table for a banquet,
olives and date wine,
not to show one good man
would ever curse his maker.
In Sheol, their shadows
flicker on the cave wall,
prove the Lord’s good will.
“Gender Unicorn”
School was once a straight ruler,
gender as clear and simple
as a math problem written
neatly on the blackboard.
No more. These students
must take a test more bewildering
than any trial in the hall
or on the playground,
just trying to fit in, survive
until lunch. He smiles beneath
his rainbow horn, gently prods
them to fill in blanks their parents
never dreamed of in starched
collars, pleated skirts. He smiles
sweetly and certain, foreleg
lifted as he marches
in the new world of endless
mutations. Neither boys
nor girls, they lay weary heads
on first-day desks, just kids.

William Miller’s eighth collection of poetry, The Crow Flew Between Us, was published by Aldrich books in 2019. His poems have appeared in The Penn Review, The Southern Review, Shenandoah, Prairie Schooner and West Branch. He lives and writes in the French Quarter of New Orleans.