L.R. Harvey Poetry

YOU ARE HERE Regardless of where we were  making for, the turns we took before, we all find the same stretch  of road eventually, no cell-service and little gas. What cabins we pass  are not tucked in the pine like that because they welcome visitors,  and ticks eat the eye of the doe carcass whose intestines refuse to leave you like a check engine light. Head-  lights are only good for making clear  how thick it is out here. If ever,   now would be the time for a map,  and—good news for you—you have that, the old one that came folded  in the glove box long before you were behind the wheel. This is the hour  of AM radio. Learning to read  should have happened in  the passenger’s seat, and long ago. 

WORSHIP ON THE SPECTRUM Running out of the grave probably looks a lot like that, actually,  arms akimbo like you’re ripping  through the cobwebs of that tireless black spider.  And what is real freedom if not  the gall to raise your hand  and scratch your armpit on the front row, to tug at your crotch like a slot machine and not once   look over your shoulder?  The seraphim circle the throne singing holy holy holy , and  the other seraphim, who  don’t pick up on social cues, laugh hysterically at something  only they can see, which I’ll dare  intuit is the invisible  face of the God who rejoices  in the wordless heat  of their unblinking stare.   

TUESDAY PRAYER Okay enough small talk, I want  a vision, a wild dream, a hangnail untrimmed enough to snag  the world’s seams. Is there brick  beneath the vinyl siding, hard- wood under the laminate floor?   There's a hundred of rolly-polly’s  when I pull up the concrete paver , an ancient war between an earthworm and the light.  The underlife is both rolled tight and wriggling, missiling out  from the core. Enough civilian casualties— I’d like to throw a punch. If that’s not on the menu for me, I’ll take  a good friend, a warm picnic table, lunch. 

PRIMITIVE We’re not evolving out of this.  We’ve too much weight to levitate above it all, too little asphalt  to pave a freeway to heaven. And what makes us so sure  it’s over that hill anyway?  What the saints know is slow,  dragging their knuckles in the dirt like neanderthals  till they snag a lip of the world’s  scab, get a grip, then pull  till the timeless seeps out.

FALLING OUT You can, in fact, forget how to talk to someone. This isn’t dementia.  You still have a syntax, a tongue,   loads of memory, but you’ve misplaced  the cadence of conversation that used to click along, back  and forth, like the metronome  which carried the music you made.  Now you speak at once, apologize.  Other times, to avoid the false  starts, the stutter of “no, you go," a silence ensues. It's deep, no doubt, but not the kind in which you can hear yourself think.

CAMPFIRE ON THE EDGE The question is always if—living here  on the battlefield’s edge—we  see ghosts.  From experience, they’re not  asking about passing premonitions  of presence, doors we know we’d closed  found open to the night, even an old man  wandering the woods whose “good evening" arrives heavy, slow, as if trailing the sludge of centuries. What they want is a farmer  with his leg blown off below the knee of his Confederate gray, (that is, if it weren’t for reenactments to explain it away.) Let’s shoot straight: we fear real belief but love the haunting  of it, the chance to wave a hand through  its chest to reaffirm that we’re the firm ones  here. So what I say instead—to duck  the question and save us all the sticky mess when the answer doesn't fit in our mouths like a s’more—is that we have a bluetick who sits in the middle of the field and barks at nothing  more than that there’s a world here  for howling about. As the fire smolders out,  someone always eyes the b