Miho Kinnas & E. Ethelbert Miller

Flying in the Age of Discovery

I enter the terminal and head
to baggage claim. Your flight
is late by several months.
The pilot has forgotten
how to land.
I sit waiting with people
waiting for family members
to arrive. I am secretly waiting
for my lover.
People know – we all know.
Everyone reads the weather
reports these days. Love can be
a downpour, a hurricane or a
gentle rain.
There is no refund for cancellations.
Some flights go missing
and never land.
Someone may be missing me
In the Indian Ocean.
Call me Vasco da Gama.
Was it saudade that traveled
via the Cape of Good Hope to
your heart?

Twice nominated for the Pushcart Prize, Miho Kinnas is a translator, writer, and poet. She is the author of three poetry collections: Today, Fish Only (2015), Move Over, Bird (2019) both by Math Paper Press, and Waiting for Sunset to Bury Red Camellias by Free Verse Press. The poem, “Three Shrimp Boats on the Horizon,” was selected for Best American Poetry 2023.  Also in 2023, a book of poetry collaborated with E. Ethelbert Miller, We Eclipse into The Other Side, was published by Pinyon Publishing. She holds an MFA in creative writing from the City University of Hong Kong. She is an instructor at Writers.com, Camp Conroy, New York Writers’ Workshop and Life-Long Learning of Hilton Head.  She offers poetry workshops based on Japanese short poetic forms. 

Ethelbert Miller is a writer and literary activist. He was born in 1950 and grew up in New York City. A graduate of Howard University, he was one of the first students at that institution to major in African American Studies. He is the former board chair of IPS and the former editor of Poet Lore.
Miller served as Director of the African American Resource Center at Howard University. In 1996, he was awarded an honorary Doctor of Literature from Emory and Henry College. A Fulbright Senior Specialist Program Fellow in 2004 and 2012, Miller is the founder and former chair of the Humanities Council of Washington, D.C. The author of several collections of poetry, he has also written a set of memoirs, Fathering Words: The Making of an African American Writer (2000) and The 5th Inning (2009),

Recently he collaborated with Miho Kinnas  on a book of poetry, We Eclipse into The Other Side (Pinyon Publishing, 2023).

Miller is the host and producer of “The Scholars,”which airs on UDC-TV. His poetry has been translated into Spanish, Portuguese, German, Hungarian, Chinese, Farsi, Norwegian, Tamil and Arabic. A recent core faculty member with the Bennington Writing Seminars, Miller has taught at UNLV, American University, George Mason University, and Emory and Henry College. Inducted into the Washington, D.C. Hall of Fame for 2015, Miller is also a regular on National Public Radio.

Miller also hosts “On the Margin,”  which examines our literary culture. Available on WPFW radio and podcast.
 

Find out more at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E._Ethelbert_Miller