“On Similes,” a Poem by Miller Oberman
From the Collection “Impossible Things”
“On Similes”
I have read my father’s book and, as I suspected, much of it is bad.
Especially the attempts to teach mindfulness, which,
given that once at a bakery he listened at length to a woman
from a mindfulness class he taught gush about its effectiveness
all the while standing on my mother’s foot, is no surprise to me.
Especially bad are the similes.
“Grief is like an unkempt beggar” (242).
“…sniff these last days of summer like a fine wine” (242).
This compared to when he’s not trying so hard.
When, at 42, he has a heart attack and his father comes,
“he holds me as if I’m made of smoke” (109).
Miller Oberman
Miller Oberman is the author of Impossible Things, forthcoming from Duke University Press, 2024 and The Unstill Ones, Princeton Series of Contemporary Poets, 2017. His awards include a Ruth Lilly Fellowship, the 92Y Discovery Prize, a NYSCA/NYFA Artist Fellowship, and Poetry magazine’s John Frederick Nims Memorial Prize for Translation. His poems have appeared in Boston Review, London Review of Books, The Nation, The New Yorker, Poetry, and Poem-a-Day. Miller is an editor at Broadsided Press, which publishes visual-literary collaborations and serves on the board of Brooklyn Poets. He teaches writing at Eugene Lang College at The New School and lives in Queens with his family.
