Jeff Harrison


Hunters, their valuation

If a hart, how was Actaeon a hunter? Who was Actaeon next to Hippolytus? Actaeon imbruted did not astonish the steeds of steady Hippolytus; no Actaeon rose from the sea. Artemis beheld, what Nimrod reshaped raised the name of Hydra, of Chimaera, of beast Nemean, Calydonian?

Moreover

Unimaginable, this a fount; moreover, this a hart; and still, who was a hunter. Handmaids, my own hinds, fable will devil as hounds.


The Exchange of Melampus and Ichnobates

MELAMPUS: What we see as a hart is Actaeon.

ICHNOBATES: Actaeon has died of Artemis.

MELAMPUS: If so, he has returned a hart.

ICHNOBATES: If that is so, was he not a hart all along? The shame, that we were subservient to our prey! How are we to bear it? Isn't vengeance too simple a name for what we must do; simple, too simple, is it not, yet extraneous also, since our appetites compel us to kill this hart?

MELAMPUS: I'm unconvinced, but I won't chance my life for Actaeon.

ICHNOBATES: Slaverer, this shows you still see him as a hart.

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 e-books from Blazevox, xPress(ed), Argotist Ebooks, and Chalk Editions. His poetry has appeared in An Introduction to the Prose Poem (Firewheel Editions), The Hay(na)ku Anthology Vol. II (Meritage Press), The Chained Hay(na)ku Project (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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