Jeff Harrison
4 poems
**
The Coquettes Transformed
heart insinuated,
my twin runaway
coquettes claim
my own Virginia
a cue to heaven:
milk simple milk
"we night. now."
crumbled before
the full pounce
could succeed
kiss, in parting,
her hand, my apes
**
Aelia Croatoan
destruct, tryst, attic, transit,
fit, water, product, treatment,
touch (also in), burnt, thought,
taught, n — print, t — portrait,
structure (t/u boundary), pattern,
daughter, totter, e/c/k — concrete,
||| t — test ||| t/n — trenchant,
s — alias, t — preternatural, stutter
[stutterer] "mutter stutterer"
|| s — closest || t — retardant ||
t — street [tee — t(r)ee], v/u — value
a — agency, s — history, o — kronos,
s — escape, c/k/s — classic, u/k — bucolic,
c/k — critic, n — centric, central
**
Commies & Microbes
we boss my off-sets and
useless nearer springs &
cleaning mantle theory
another lot to rot explanation
stroke bored children, here,
grey-bolted scavenged phials cold fell
come here, Stunned World Powders
we boss my off-sets & useless nearer springs
& vague mirrored wenches are the best,
rush past but cry rust distant, blank charge
turned grasp to grinding & orders sockets from
street-sharpeners cleaning mantle theory
batten up mystery confessionals, tell and
keep us from print, O Adonai, felt we tears,
solvent, rotted and of plumed bearing
mantle theory, handsaws, the wrecked mills,
& silent springs, storefronts now fire into day
billboard faces lately bloom'd in doorways dying
were imported to twist mine mortal coat
come Midnight I write the shadows shut into
back hours snowy, their knuckles ghosted of Paradise
my showering came, cloud roll cannot store, no, have
just the Halt City, careless silence crack'd from off-sets
I'm as from nearer, blue no cry vain, her be near explanation
the cars I fed looks are shaking, flaked from houses, SNOW
GLOBE! die in confession, still said with more, corpse pleaded for
the lie knaves, good the deadly hands twist mine mortal coat
half-built words are my house creatures, stroke their ratty fur
those who could die turned up dead, billboard faces, topical they
who wrecked, their doubt deploring down to a beautiful sudden
what twins the forests strolled up to me, responsibly perfumed &
cowardly about outside pleasure, strolled up around slowly o'clock
pure weak somber course walled in granite, something there is that
courts lips! these sweet tree-tops scattered like crumbled guns -
any scatterings come, called, & puff the trumpet gruesome that turned on me
should to be found beneath my hand house-creaturely, scattered now tho
**
Virginia with her heel...
Virginia with her heel which faulty attentions would burst
.......with her ship's surgeon brought ashore for the ride
.......with her hand sounding this roster
.......Virginia who heard the shot during her crawl uphill
Virginia with her inadmissible blot sold into darkness
.......whose long-legged volunteering petrified them all
.......Virginia with her toenails waylaid by ruffians, Virginia who
.......agrees with me that not everyone understands insouciance
Virginia with her covenant concluding her speech
.......with her foil tip bustling up the haze of spite
.......with her window erased five miles south
.......with her horse insisting the crowd be waved away
Virginia high and dry like the tail of an unworldly person
.......with her faint pandemonium quarried back around
.......whose symptoms caught their breath once in the evasion's shade
Virginia with her non sequiturs crouched and rotted
.......with her rigidly unremarkable canine teeth
.......Virginia with Byrd at the South Pole
Virginia who might have envied the sob still ahead
....... with her summit sounding like a Spanish doctor
Virginia limping through the pages to indicate sleepless purpose
.......with her shovel pressed for answers twice daily
Virginia whose verse is too late for the fetus
.......with her clay on all fours beneath her skirt
.......with her blue sky movements feverishly across the lake
.......with her withered scabbard scissoring briefly to life
Virginia whose nerves are still staring out to sea
Virginia with her recognition tucked into my waistband
.......with her uncommon constitution prepared for another midst
.......with her perverse need for antiquated conveniences
....... with her insinuation that lucidity is better at a distance
Virginia with her still-burning ordeal of abolitionist reserve
.......with her hospitable inclusion of coordinate predicates
Virginia whose last twilight went in for a ten-year stretch
**
return to sawbuck 2.1
**
Jeff Harrison has publications from MAG Press, Writers Forum, Persistencia Press, and Furniture Press. He has two e-books at xPress(ed), and one at Blazevox. His poetry has appeared in Sentence: a Journal of Prose Poetics, Moria, Nerve Lantern, Otoliths, Spaltung, Xerography, MiPOesias, NOON: journal of the short poem, Big Bridge, and elsewhere. He has an interview blog with Allen Bramhall called Antic View. More of his poems can be read here.
**
The Coquettes Transformed
heart insinuated,
my twin runaway
coquettes claim
my own Virginia
a cue to heaven:
milk simple milk
"we night. now."
crumbled before
the full pounce
could succeed
kiss, in parting,
her hand, my apes
**
Aelia Croatoan
destruct, tryst, attic, transit,
fit, water, product, treatment,
touch (also in), burnt, thought,
taught, n — print, t — portrait,
structure (t/u boundary), pattern,
daughter, totter, e/c/k — concrete,
||| t — test ||| t/n — trenchant,
s — alias, t — preternatural, stutter
[stutterer] "mutter stutterer"
|| s — closest || t — retardant ||
t — street [tee — t(r)ee], v/u — value
a — agency, s — history, o — kronos,
s — escape, c/k/s — classic, u/k — bucolic,
c/k — critic, n — centric, central
**
Commies & Microbes
we boss my off-sets and
useless nearer springs &
cleaning mantle theory
another lot to rot explanation
stroke bored children, here,
grey-bolted scavenged phials cold fell
come here, Stunned World Powders
we boss my off-sets & useless nearer springs
& vague mirrored wenches are the best,
rush past but cry rust distant, blank charge
turned grasp to grinding & orders sockets from
street-sharpeners cleaning mantle theory
batten up mystery confessionals, tell and
keep us from print, O Adonai, felt we tears,
solvent, rotted and of plumed bearing
mantle theory, handsaws, the wrecked mills,
& silent springs, storefronts now fire into day
billboard faces lately bloom'd in doorways dying
were imported to twist mine mortal coat
come Midnight I write the shadows shut into
back hours snowy, their knuckles ghosted of Paradise
my showering came, cloud roll cannot store, no, have
just the Halt City, careless silence crack'd from off-sets
I'm as from nearer, blue no cry vain, her be near explanation
the cars I fed looks are shaking, flaked from houses, SNOW
GLOBE! die in confession, still said with more, corpse pleaded for
the lie knaves, good the deadly hands twist mine mortal coat
half-built words are my house creatures, stroke their ratty fur
those who could die turned up dead, billboard faces, topical they
who wrecked, their doubt deploring down to a beautiful sudden
what twins the forests strolled up to me, responsibly perfumed &
cowardly about outside pleasure, strolled up around slowly o'clock
pure weak somber course walled in granite, something there is that
courts lips! these sweet tree-tops scattered like crumbled guns -
any scatterings come, called, & puff the trumpet gruesome that turned on me
should to be found beneath my hand house-creaturely, scattered now tho
**
Virginia with her heel...
Virginia with her heel which faulty attentions would burst
.......with her ship's surgeon brought ashore for the ride
.......with her hand sounding this roster
.......Virginia who heard the shot during her crawl uphill
Virginia with her inadmissible blot sold into darkness
.......whose long-legged volunteering petrified them all
.......Virginia with her toenails waylaid by ruffians, Virginia who
.......agrees with me that not everyone understands insouciance
Virginia with her covenant concluding her speech
.......with her foil tip bustling up the haze of spite
.......with her window erased five miles south
.......with her horse insisting the crowd be waved away
Virginia high and dry like the tail of an unworldly person
.......with her faint pandemonium quarried back around
.......whose symptoms caught their breath once in the evasion's shade
Virginia with her non sequiturs crouched and rotted
.......with her rigidly unremarkable canine teeth
.......Virginia with Byrd at the South Pole
Virginia who might have envied the sob still ahead
....... with her summit sounding like a Spanish doctor
Virginia limping through the pages to indicate sleepless purpose
.......with her shovel pressed for answers twice daily
Virginia whose verse is too late for the fetus
.......with her clay on all fours beneath her skirt
.......with her blue sky movements feverishly across the lake
.......with her withered scabbard scissoring briefly to life
Virginia whose nerves are still staring out to sea
Virginia with her recognition tucked into my waistband
.......with her uncommon constitution prepared for another midst
.......with her perverse need for antiquated conveniences
....... with her insinuation that lucidity is better at a distance
Virginia with her still-burning ordeal of abolitionist reserve
.......with her hospitable inclusion of coordinate predicates
Virginia whose last twilight went in for a ten-year stretch
**
return to sawbuck 2.1
**
Jeff Harrison has publications from MAG Press, Writers Forum, Persistencia Press, and Furniture Press. He has two e-books at xPress(ed), and one at Blazevox. His poetry has appeared in Sentence: a Journal of Prose Poetics, Moria, Nerve Lantern, Otoliths, Spaltung, Xerography, MiPOesias, NOON: journal of the short poem, Big Bridge, and elsewhere. He has an interview blog with Allen Bramhall called Antic View. More of his poems can be read here.
