Jeff Harrison


Amaranthine

cry Neptune, Theseus, then Hippolytus
cry Neptune, Polyphemus, then Ulysses
stare stark, mute Actaeon
after Artemis, the hounds

fly as though a hind, Eurydice
and you, Arethusa, fly ever on
Orpheus! that you were Hebrus ever in sight of hind!
and Aristaeus in his fervor ever the shamefaced Phlegethon

Nemo

The star obscures Venus, the river, Alpheus. Phoebus blazes, and diaphanous His wards, ourselves naming each other the light in earnest, the poets. Our choir the stray lyrist queries. What porthole, Ulysses as Nemo, houses your regard? Phosphorescent leviathans, phosphorescent chimeras of the obsidian deeps abound in your unseconded accounts. Jove is not forgotten in the lightning; what of phosphorus?

Terpsichore

My dream lamed, my dream to have my words on the rose to music altered and danced. Posterity, the bottomless pit with laurel leaves to break your fall, is indeed nothing beside such ephemerae. The curse is from Terpsichore, who hasn't returned after my brief, and now forgotten, speech on the sovereignty of scent in awakening memory. Terpsichore, I believe, took offense, as She, although ghostly, brings with Her the bouquet of the earthiest of hyenas.

With a bark of laughter, I realize this theory of scent and memory may have occurred to me before my speech to Terpsichore.


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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