Today’s Onerous Task: Making Memory

My poem “Trying to Make More Memory” was just published in the Autumn, 2026 issue of THEMA. Many thanks to Virginia Howard, editor. THEMA has been around for 38 years. It was established in 1988 by the THEMA Literary Society in Metairie, Louisiana, and has been continuously publishing theme-generated collections of fiction, poetry, essays, and art ever since.

Trying to Make More Memory

by JK Miller

Trying to make more memory

I scrolled through my cloud drive

and found long wobbly GoPro videos of downhills

along Spain’s northern coast

when I was there

and I was on a bike

and those hills enthralled me

but the videos don’t capture

any of the plummeting

pit-of-the-stomach

thrill

delete

there’s the dog

when we got him as a puppy he was off in the woods with his brother

there are the photos

of the barns

from when I was into barns

mostly their decrepitude

you know wind bleached wood

with splinter grains and knock-kneed walls

and mosses of various kinds covering the roofs

and rusted, shot-up wind vanes that wouldn’t twirl

this one, a winter composition, gray face,

wide mouth, letting the shotgun white snow barrel through

marred by a shrub

that gives the face wild whiskers on one cheek

delete

the dog, with my daughter hugging him for dear life

photos of Spanish food

in arrangements of cod and herring and ham

on white plates

delete

there are the video panoramas

of the road from Pamplona

and the view from the turnout on the Blue Ridge

where it’s pretty clear that I started filming and didn’t know where I was going

delete

close ups of the dog’s face that my wife took,

his eyes imperturbable, crystalline lenses

eyes closed in

sunlight that show his diode filament whiskers

and nose like an oiled leather loveseat. Delete?