L.R. Harvey Poetry

Learning to Pump  Then after months of flopping around  she felt it, hope tightening  with her tummy as all 29 pounds and pigtails curved like a pink comma on the pollened page of the air where she paused,    then flew forward like the latter half  of the thoughts that come barreling   well-aged from the class-five  of her mouth in the car after school, so fast  and airborne she nearly snagged  her bare foot on the cloud’s  crab-claw, which no one saw—her father  in the shed, her mother flipping  sweet potato fries for dinner— which led her to climb down   and run to where the dog elongated in equinox light, lean over and rest  her hands on the sun-warmed barrel  of his chest and shout into his ear flopped like a cup to receive what bubbled forth, Odie, I just learned how  to pump , to which he didn’t jump up or howl his hooray but just lay  without reply, which she didn’t seem ...

What's Beneath Too long this linoleum languor.  Aren’t you tired of pretending tile curls  like the brittle crust of a chapped lip? You and I both know  if we could get a grip on the flap  of skin beneath the chin and clear the snag of nose our faces would snap off the scalp like a swimmer’s cap, and once we mopped up the place  we could really see eye to eye. We might find, like the time we moved the washer when it was time to move out  of Liberty St. that beneath you could press through the floor with a pinky finger. You said shit like you meant it. It cost us the whole of our security  deposit. Sure, it'll mean more than just the laminate but the quarter-round and base- boards, even the subfloor down to the joists, but we knew with this fixer-upper we were signing away choice.   And then for every sunk savings, every swift-swallowed dream, you hear things like those who find   original hard- wood, even heart-of-pine’s embering glo...

Making the Pipe To be hollowed enough  to cradle the flame,  to be a grain  that won’t split  under the steady press of a spoon bit  scooping out  the burled core , to waft into the weft as nothing more than amoretto and a hint of whiskey cavendish

Wake, Sleepers Regarding the leveled charge of being  half-awake, I take what appears the stand and mutter a soft guilty that slips through my hands like something not unlike blood  or butter. To the ensuing one  of being okay with it I smear them  with a scream of innocent, innocent,  innocent till it swells the open  orifice of their ears and their faces  melt as I sit up in bed, drenched  at last in real, salty sweat.

Beneath the Sink Not much room to wiggle  your elbows or get anything  like torque behind the wrench, and did I mention how the rusted nut  of the world is tucked so far back you just have to feel  for it, eyes crawling on the cobwebs you let spread under  the cabinet while your fingers fumble for a catch, that tightening you’ve come to connect  as potential , the grip that keeps you  coming back to spend the long afternoon  of your life chasing the chance that like a breath, like water  from the rock, suddenly it loosens.

The Cardinal Moment  After the rain a thick blanket  of crow settled on the field and feasted on the soft bodies washed up and wriggling, and heaven, refusing  not to see, wept blood, and a drop  dripped from the poplar tree  and settled no where else but right on the brow of this black  fever, and in a breaking   thunderous enough to shake the broken back into place all the darkness took flight.