Jeff Harrison


The Snake Polisher's Shorter Paradise

disdain I eye the dead the younger chase whilst
wipe I clean the heads of reptiles passive as sunbeams
and dear like day! their air is mine! O sea! O sea who
outbuilt Daedalus, that heedless profounder,
must Hades knoweth serpents that to the Pleiades sing?



And now refers only to Lethe's diverting ripple

wake, calmed roses, & rove so widely,
you who once kept close to ground, for
this is a large heaven for little fades

in some far corner is the poet (her
blue words, these days, silvery upon ivy)
who referred to you as evening's wheat



Stars, their odorless decay

stars are blank, tho whiter; infernal, tho diaphanous;
Argos..., ...Argos, sportive, or the host of innocence
(multitudinous, or themselves an accommodator)

melodiously, I hear, they roll thru airy Illium, un-
inscribed, delineable by none (perhaps not unduly past
what was to succeed this counterfeit sun)



Neaera's Demise, Upon Reaching for a Cluster of Grapes

these grapes, mantled buoyant by the vine, are, though
immarmoreal, classic? yes, they look the shape -
her body the maid drops with such haste they seem to fly
heliconward, dashed into antiquity, from her gravitating hand




Jeff Harrison's poetry collection Fickleyes, Futilears, & William Wormswork is available from MAG Press. His chapbook The Unread Is Carefully Ancient is available from Writers Forum. His chapbook Queen of Hearts is available from PERSISTENCIA*PRESS. He is #4 in Furniture Press's PO25centsEM series. He has two e-books, LOOT and Lives of Eminent Assyrians, at xPress(ed), and one at Blazevox. His poetry has appeared in Nerve Lantern, Sentence, Mipoesias, Big Bridge, Muse Apprentice Guild, VeRT, Cipher Journal, Dirt, Xerography, Argotist, Moria, Poethia, Word for Word, papertiger, Shampoo, Noon, Blackbox, Masthead, Side Reality, Generator, Tin Lustre Mobile, foam:e, Eratio, XStream, A Chide's Alphabet, 5_Trope, The Dream People, Aught, Blackboard Project, Starfish, Kulture Vulture, Wire Sandwich, Znine, Newtopia, Pettycoat Relaxer, Great Works, canwehaveourballback, Gypsy, Dusie, Kitchen Sink, Wandering Hermit Review, melancholia's tremulous dreadlocks, and Cranky.

 
 
 
previous page     contents     next page