L.R. Harvey Poetry

The Scheme of Things The stench of headless chickens from the plant on Broad St., and on the other side a yellow claw is digging out a hill that never asked for it.                                    But still,  she told me I looked nice today,  my favorite cashmere layered on top a checkered shirt, my navy tie. Sweat-grey sky sits heavy, wet, like I  am stuck beneath a load of dirty laundry,  and paired with poultry corpses it  is difficult to breathe.                                    But still,  the radio is saying that a girl and her dad were rescued in  the nick of time while hiking on  the Appalachian trail,  “nd police, along with medical personnel, are saying they will likely be alright.

We're All Just Readers in a Dying Light Wary, yearning, the thumb along the edge of all that’s still unturned— and we'll continue dancing on the thresh- hold of another world, somewhere between the pages we have known and those beyond our sight, searching beneath a fritzing lamp that soon will flicker out for good.

12:43am The water glass is cool, resting on       the bedside table beside the silver lamp           and all the empty cups of nights gone by.  But you are warm, the skin along your spine      condensed with sweat as once again you twist           around, convulse and throw yourself against the covers, leaning to spill your dinner in       the can you placed beside your pillow in            anticipation. And somehow here am I,  a shirtless, breathing body lying in between       the source of life and gutturals of death,            staring at the ceiling fan, my breath in rhythm with the circling wooden blades—      and caught, perhaps at heart like all of us,            prostrate in the middle of the two,  a hand on one and thinking of the other. 

In the Walls of the World Completely silent, listening for voices, things that are not there: Some meaning in the click the dryer makes for reasons all its own— meaning in the roar of silence thick  and slow and heavy—significance in how  the inside of the blanket feels around my toes.  How strange to hear the world spilling out its secrets, a pulse so odd and true it only bursts to life on Friday mornings like this, blossoms like a mold in the soil of kitchen quiet and a creaky floorboard as I shift my weight.  But secrets, as they are, are secrets, and maybe I am not a confidant but more a peeping Tom, the sort you dream about in nightmares, the guy who's hiding in a wall or  pressing up his ear against a door that isn’t his.

Questions, Love, or maybe Poems Sometimes you come in little boxes, pink and neatly tied with lace or yellow ribbon,  suddenly appearing as if by magic  on the doorstep of my unexpecting mind— no address, not even just a folding card to tell me who it’s from.                                         But other times  you hit me from behind, force a hold until I wrestle back, and through the night we sweat and grapple till the cock crows.   In time I'll pin you down, but somehow in the scuffle you'll touch my hip—(you always do)— to cripple me and send me hobbling on my way a little different than before. Just swear, on oath, to bless me first.

Fender Bender, North Market St. Our bumpers kissed—perhaps "made-out" is more in line of what they did—and not the tender kind, with lips, but teeth on teeth, and loud enough  to bring the cops. You came out screaming, gruff and red and huffing, but all that I could think about was Brave New World ( which I fell asleep  reading last night) and the hypnopaedic verse of “everyone belongs to everybody else,”  and how if that were true than I had hit  my own car, cause what is yours is mine, but it was not the time for musing jokes. And besides,  if that were actually the case then I  would have to own your rage-distorted face,  the spittle spraying from your mouth, the race of fresh profanity you birth as if  to populate a dying planet. And if, in fact, we shared it all, then logically  these words are yours, the overhanging tree that watches as the cops pull up is ours,  and maybe we are even Someone Else’s,  a thought so strang

Bathing in the Jordan This morning, sitting with Billy Collins and  the nine emaciated heads of ghost- white horses, I watch the pulsing rhythmic air from the heater at my feet stand up and twist about the living room like a toddler in  her Cinderella dress. The street lights tell  their flicker-jokes, sneaking punchlines in  the window slit above the door, and all  the birds are waking up and laughing with  the morning dew. And somehow here am I,  a skeleton with skin, who gets to laugh  along with Billy and the birds, at all  the little things that make this place a place,  receive the grace of spit and mud smeared on my eyes.

House-hunting She liked the one on Elmore Avenue— its sloping yard, the phantom children she projected through the original hardwood halls,  the mantle she would populate with frames  and ivy strands, perhaps a decorative lamp.  I liked the one on Baxter Street, perhaps because, on showing it, the realtor said,  “Outdated fixtures, but the structure’s sound,”  and I said, “Same here.”                                       They didn't laugh. He looked at me a little funny, began to talk  about the costs to make it right, and I was envious that it would only need  some money, time, ‘a little elbow grease to rip the carpet up, put in some tile.’

Across the Street You’re either proud, and want to show  the inner workings of  suburban life in the glow of kitchen light, or you can’t afford a set of Walmart curtains, which  your Beamer’s dealer plate is arguing against.  Whatever it may be, I find you put  me in an awkward situation  every morning, shuffling to my car,  my left eye in an empty kitchen, my right reflecting on the episode of Criminal Minds I saw last night—the stalker peering in,  the family freaking out, the pulsing music tense. But this morning, as I felt  my eyes drawn upwards by the glow of hallway light, I did not expect to see a pod of jellyfish suspended from a ceiling fixture. My day,  quite frankly, was ruined, as I cannot quit pondering those rubber sea-pods, plump glowing orbs just floating airily in the window-light, the meaning of it all: A present from a friend?  A love of sea-life? A piece of art?  If meaning anything, it&#

Recalling the Creation Account ‘And let them all be lovers of the light,  and throw themselves against all sources of  it, searching for a fix—and when they hit the chilly concrete stoop, all jumbled up in disarray, let them forget their past mistakes and try again, again, till they lay  in little furry lumps, their little arms crossed,  scattered around the faded Welcome mat.’  It’s something like this—I just can’t remember if  this was the day when God created men or moths— or maybe it was possums, like the one my front-left tire just kissed goodnight, tucked in to sleep between the curving yellow lines.

Down 'Ever-After Ln' I glimpsed the sign on west-bound 55, and while my ‘99 Tacoma hurled  onward, nose-down to home, my homeless mind  went trooping past the mailbox, down the gravel path where I somehow knew a little cabin  would be waiting at the end, a grey-haired man  just slicing home-baked bread, lathering on  fresh apple jam—his wife, hair up, sitting in  the butter lamp-light, knitting woolen socks beside the wooden bowl of lemons fast asleep and dreaming zesty dreams—the lock unlatched outside the banging screen door. And as  the Carolina chill comes crawling down  the pine-tree hillsides, the cabin warms, a light- house in the dark, a spot of morning in  an inky night. If ever-after is,  in fact, a cabin and a couple at a kitchen table way down a gravel drive beside a North Carolina highway, that makes some sense—Eve and Adam playing checkers in their matching striped pajamas, waiting on their wayward chil