Review By Sarah Van Clef
MaryAnn L. Miller, in Time is a Snake’s Tongue, writes of a specific incident in a specific place and time in the author’s life, yet she reaches readers’ hearts with her words and images, which echo into our present day.
Birds are a favorite image of Miller’s. In several poems, they appear as high schoolers in a marching band walking in a parade, as survivors against the threat of overdevelopment; signs of the future. For example, a red-tailed hawk is driven from its territory by a housing development but returns to kill bunnies in a backyard in the poem called “Red Tail.”
Miller’s poems consider the impact of racism on an individual, adeptly merging scenes from the past with present consciousness. Her poem, “My Armor Is Silence,” encapsulates the sentiment of this chapbook: My verbs are wishes. / As long as I’m / quiet, I will be okay. / My mouth is shut / but my skin shouts.
Other poems reference prejudice in its varied forms. Miller also uses images of a bird to tell the story of a human in “Trans-specied.” The first stanza begins with a ‘tweet’ from the cradle. Later, the character jumps, ‘trying to get more air.’ Near adulthood, he grows ‘wings’ and a ‘feathered neck.’ Even though the nest calls to him, he flies, speaking with his ‘beaking lips,’ searching for the food of a hawk, ‘rodents, hatchlings, small bony fish.’ His transition is complete. There’s the suffering of Native Americans at the hands of deceitful white people, youth taunting the aged, and the fear of Communism knocking at the door during the Cold War. There are Catholic nuns frightening children, white Italian parents’ dread of a dark-complected child, and memories of racism that prohibited a neighbor from drinking from a family water glass.
Miller employs creative punctuation and line breaks, underscoring the social critique integral to the pieces. There is meaning between the commas and periods. There is meaning between the words that becomes recognized only by reading aloud. It takes some effort to understand the message, the truth in these words, these images, these poems. Just like it takes effort to recognize injustice, past, present, and ongoing.
Sarah Van Clef is a the Reviewers Editor of Philadelphia Stories. She is an Adjunct Professor in English Writing and Community Literacy across multiple colleges across New Jersey.