publishing poetry chapbooks
 


Monday's Poem

Milligan ... is a literary wizard.
The Bloomsbury Review

Make that a "'witerary lizard."
Joy Harjo

Born in Dallas, Texas, Bryce Milligan has lived in San Antonio since 1977. Among other things, he has been a folksinger/songwriter, a maker of guitars, drums and dulcimers, a carpenter, a rare book bibliographer and appraiser, a college English and creative writing instructor, a poet-in-the-schools, director of the country's only 4-year high school creative writing program,. an arts administrator, a book and magazine editor, a book designer, and a publisher. As a writer, he has been a newspaper columnist, a freelance journalist, a scholar, a novelist, a poet, a playwright, and an essayist. It has been an interesting life.

Links:
Bryce Milligan
Wings Press




© Bryce Milligan

Instructions for the Funeral

Find the right hill
the highest, rockiest
in this too flat land,
that one north of town

with no roads, no paths
but water tracks
Do your best to avoid
the law; follow only

the oldest conventions;
especially avoid
any professionals
in the business of death

Cut no living wood
but seek out the scrub
cedar brush blown down
and weave a lattice couch,

cover it with the old
four-stripe Hudson Bay
Lay me out in the morning
in my oldest jeans

and the red Guatemalan shirt
with buffalo nickel buttons
to provide the crows
with whatnots

 

 

 


"Instructions for the Funeral" was first published in TEX! (Dallas,1998) It won the annual contest, judged that year by Rita Dove.