Palmer Smith: When did you first start writing? Have you always known you wanted to be a poet? ​ Chloe Yelena Miller: I remember complaining that I was bored one summer as a child, and my dad told me to, “go write a poem.” While he probably just wanted a moment of silence and didn’t have any other ideas, it worked. I went somewhere by myself and wrote. After that, my parents would buy me notebooks and I would fill them up. I’m not sure that I always wanted to be a poet in par

Place us in a 63 white Mercedes, doing a slow swim across an interstate that looks like every highway we’ve already seen in film class. Place him as the driver, and even though I lay sideways with her in the backseat, the triangulation is moving forward. Don’t look out the window, he says, stern, rearview. I look out the window. I have lost interest as he manifests endlessly unraveling road beneath our wheels. Synthetic perfume will do that to me, a view of fields blurred by

brush your teeth and take your contacts out before the water turns off at 10pm fill plastic bins with water like an IV drip drip so you can flush the toilet in the middle of the night when you can’t sleep in the morning you’ll have pandesal and kape with tita two mugs in the microwave for a minute and a half instant coffee slowly disintegrating in warmth before you sleep turn on the air conditioner loud and artificial downstairs you cover all of the food in plastic and make s