L.R. Harvey Poetry

Around and Around My tears won’t water this wasteland enough to grow sufficient food for even one bloated boy. T he right words slid in the right slots like a master- round of Connect-4 won’t keep even a single  student’s mom from calling it quits while he lines up a free kick  at an out-of-town tournament  in Arizona. These games we play,  carrying on because we must, because dust won’t do the dishes. Ashes, ashes,  we all fall down. I t' s where the song ends but not, we're told, the story, and we go on reading like there might be an appendix for what comes after: laughter, grass in our hair as all of us stand up again.

Grammar Mini-Lesson Love is. Subject-verb. Despite appearances, a complete thought. Implies existence. Love your neighbor. An independent clause about dependence, giving us, yes, pause  as we look for the subject hidden right in front of us and just to the left of “love,” like a neighbor.  Because love is nearing In one sense another thought that needs nothing, the way “because the train is nearing” doesn’t bear prolonged reflection  on syntax but decided action in getting off the tracks, or in this case on them.  In another, entirely dependent  on what comes after, so  therefore incomplete.  Please take your pencils  and fill in the blank. 

Christian Nationalists, Friday Night Down here we have the real ones,  like my friend’s co-worker, Justin, who told Chase to summon his troop of exiles while he called his cadre of men  for the chance at a kind of Southern  symposion, a Deep-South dialectic.  Their stance was largely foreign  to me, but I went for love of Chase and interest in the type of militant  hermeneutic maneuvers required  to mold Christ’s face to Washington’s,  pulling in about fifteen minutes late to about fifteen people milling around  a beer cooler in Justin’s backyard like Syrian women at a well. Knowing just one other, I shook hands and tried like hell to look the type who cared to remember their names while scanning  all the same for some sort of sign— a glint in the eye, a certain length of beard— to make clear who was here with my people  and who came from the other side.  I didn’t get very far before it was time and all of us were called to th...

Wrong Guy There are worse things than being  sprawled on the cafeteria floor  along a saucy smear of mystery  meat, the patter of the principal’s feet  drawing near to haul you to detention,  your broken jaw not failing to mention how you walked tall to the football table and poured milk on the meathead who you heard from a friend of a friend  said what he said about your sister.  Not that it will heal quickly or won’t hurt  like hell, but there are worse wounds than losing the right fight, like landing the hook all right and standing  broad-chested and triumphant over  that befuddled face, your knuckles stained  with the blood of the other Jake, the innocent  one who never uttered a single word.

Tent-Making Stake it deep as you can. I mean really pound it , man. Tie taut the lines  with a double knot, stretch’em  right to snapping, so tight  in this breeze the walls aren’t flapping.  Hang pictures of family trees, oak  trees, rooted things. Sweep clean the mat and feed the fire so it burns when you’re not there to tend it.  Make this tent your castle,  let your kids pretend it. Roll out a thick Persian rug on the dirt floor, just don’t forget to show them how to rise to the rustle at the camp’s core.  The tribe is heading out;  you won’t want to live here anymore.

Grounded When we first moved in to his Father- in-law’s place, he laid out for us  how—long as we didn’t mind—he’d keep on  mowing through the property line dividing  the field; he’d always done it  and he had the time. We shook hands  on the porch and it was a done deal, but not the grass, which grows real fast around here. In ensuing years  we had babies and painted rooms  to the roar of his Toro motor,  each summer a bit louder as he did  exactly what he said but also edged one strip closer to the house, closer, closer,  till we joked about how pretty soon  we could sell our mower, living on the land  of a man who wants nothing more than to blow over our boundaries, his love  dissatisfied till we no longer feel the weight of our obligations  and the lawn is cut low enough  for no serpent to hide, the girls set free to run barefoot beneath the oak tree, fearless.