Jeff Harrison


Porphyry

Issuance, pathless you had been
Unlikeness, pathless you had been
Nightingale, pathless you had been
Allurement, pathless you had been

And from whose hand, imposture, your voice?

Of fable, my words, and of my words, no fable
Of Virginia, my words, and of my words, no Virginia
Oh, for a verse to height sable Virginia with fêtes!
Of fêtes, my words, and of fêtes, no expectation

Reverie heights hours rich with imposture, cypress heights a shade
And from whose hand, nightingale, your voice?
Polis heights error, wilderness (heart or nail) heights voyage

Lake Porphyry

As watchful of me as our stars of us would I have the rose. Marmoreal, my longing; thus the rose, under some immortal's hand, must show as porphyry. Was the preceding not the porphyry section of the ongoing? Indeed, Porphyry finds, were it not the porphyry section of the ongoing, it would incessantly mill about... accepting just any draught from the laved dead. Speak they of a Cephissus clear with the dews drawn from their brows? This is the Aglaia section, this the Pomona... and so on to Virginia. How is one body of poetry, call it Lake Porphyry, responsible for a myriad of fates (not Parcae; rather, soliloquies), unless many of the fate-holders are mistaken? At the foot of whose bed, spectre, did you wish to luminesce? And you, spectre, and you?

The Grave of Archilochus

With attendant wasps the Parcae christened me The Grave of Archilochus. Musae, unaccompanied, divulged me nothing past The Grave. I am innocent past any seedy grave, and have no epithets against fate or grace. If Archilochus is mute and motionless within me, Archilochus has his rest in all of us. Archilochus, I ask myself, what is this necrologic ubiquity?

On Artemis espied by Actaeon

What deity need bathe? For deity, purification, like speech or manifestation, is pure and utter form -- like vengeance, Artemis, or appeasement. Remembrance will picture Actaeon blameless and cervine throughout.

Jeff Harrison has poems in all the issues of Otoliths except the second issue. He has publications from Writers Forum, MAG Press, Persistencia Press, and Furniture Press. He has two e-books at xPress(ed), and one at Blazevox. His poetry has appeared in An Introduction to the Prose Poem (Firewheel Editions), The Hay(na)ku Anthology Vol. II (Meritage Press), Sentence: a Journal of Prose Poetics, Xerography, Moria, NOON: journal of the short poem, Dusie, MiPOesias, EXPLORINGfictions, EOAGH, and elsewhere. He has an interview blog with Allen Bramhall called Antic View.

 
 
 
 
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