what miller learned from monroe

a found poem

[She] taught him to spot an orphan
in a crowded room

to recognize
in [the] eyes

the bottomless loneliness
no parented person can know


Found in Arthur Miller's Missing Act in the September 2007 Vanity Fair. A heartbreaking account of how the playwright Arthur Miller institutionalized his son Daniel, who had Down syndrome, from birth. "She" is Miller's ex-wife, Marilyn Monroe, who was herself raised in foster care.