My Director
Once, my high school band director
threw a metal music stand across the room.
Not at any particular student,
but not away from us either.
My director loved teaching symphony,
hated the marching band.
The band director my director replaced
——who had loved marching band
almost above all else——stepped down
after marrying an 18-year-old former student.
The year before that,
the marching band placed in state, so
parents were mixed over his going. Once
the 18-year-old former student he married
played the trumpet
in the symphony and marching band.
After I graduated, he (the downgrade,
my director) was downgraded
to the middle school band. He must have replaced
my middle school band teacher,
who must’ve retired. This was the school
where my seventh-grade science teacher punched
a twelve-year-old in the head last year.
I can’t tell you a thing about his class
or the lessons I must have learned there.
Carpenter Bees
the work
of their mouths
a gentle machine
drilling
perfect rings in
my pine wood swing
local men
build wood traps
to lure them
paper mâché
hornet nests
to deter them
two thousand
miles away
my daddy
cuts through
wood too
where bees
build nests
my daddy
makes corners
tables
shelves
a small pine ring box
promises
a cherrywood
rocking horse
for the baby
I’ll never have
Millie Tullis (she/they) is a poet, teacher, and folklorist. She holds an MFA from George Mason University and an MA in American Studies & Folklore from Utah State University. Her work has been published in Sugar House Review, Stone Circle Review, Cimarron Review, Ninth Letter, SWWIM, and elsewhere. Their first full-length collection, These Saints are Stones, is forthcoming with Signature Books in 2026. Millie is the Editor-in-Chief of Psaltery & Lyre, an online literary journal, and the incoming Editor-in-Chief of Exponent II. Raised in northern Utah, Millie lives and works in upstate South Carolina. Her favorite historical feud is between Charles Dickens and Hans Christian Anderson (Team Anderson).
