L.R. Harvey Poetry

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. 

Home Alone A book on the porch  while the light lasts, which it never has  the decency to do, leaves us   to go on squinting mid- sentence suspended  somewhere at the margin.  These days dusk edges in  earlier, always earlier, but if it's time  for shutting down no one told the piano,  and no one’s here to call  to mind how loud is allowed to bang the blacks  and the dark back  till the gravel cries out  a late-coming return.

They How can you not love ‘they,’ recipient of searches like ‘what do they  do with old oil’ or ‘how do they  make cottage cheese,’ a faithfully faceless  workhorse all too pleased to receive  the blunt blows of our hatred for what we’re sure they  do behind closed doors, how they’re  coming for our children, our freedom, they’re  relentless pursuit of all we hold dear.  How can you not love this savior  pronoun, its wide body satisfied to bear the whole of our loathings, questions,  and qualms, and then, knowing we’d  break like glass in the stare  of how warped we’ve become,  wrapping the sum like a marble  in its palm, one day to be flicked— you know what they  say—to kingdom come.

That Final Turn Tuck turned over to us his Expedition when he got the new model and heard  the red Accord Gracie inherited from Tyler quit turning over for good. She’d driven it   ever since I throttled my cousin’s ‘87 back from Beaufort, parted ways at graduation  when the four-speed wouldn’t roar me  through college, used the jingle to buy a little truck I later gave to Micaiah  on the handshake agreement he’d fix  what I couldn’t beneath the hoods of our future  fleet. The faded Forester that followed  later fit his sister Kaitlin’s needs, so I signed over the keys when Hunt gifted me  his Fit since he bought his uncle’s truck,  right around the time Gracie’s other brother  had the pluck to give new life to the old  4Runner our new neighbor sold. All told,  despite those who insist to tow the weight  of their despair that the haunting presence  of a junk yard holds a key part  to get the new earth r...

Counting the Cost Sick of my shirts shrinking  in the dry heat of this whirling age  of efficiency, I tacked a clothesline  from two trees to take a stand  with soil, sky, and the tenuous work of being strung between. Mid-70’s with a breeze,  and things were clipping along nicely  when Andrew called to lay out  how his Labrador puppy was crushed   by a car on their walk, came yelping back  to the house, turned a circle and died in the yard, a loss miles away from a child or spouse but near enough to make clear you can talk  the talk on a day like this about how precious to be skin- wrapped, wind-born and billowed,  but when it whips right up  and rips off the line what you thought  sufficiently secured, you better be sure.

Home Alone Coming home she called to say  she took the girls and they’d be back  by six, time an unexpected gift  I didn’t know how best to use,  so read a bit on the porch  while the light last then closed  the book when it didn’t,  which it never does. These days dusk edges in earlier, always earlier, a tide lapping at our toes,  but if it's time for shutting down the piano doesn't know, and in this hollow no one’s here to call to mind how loud is decent to bang the blacks in defiance against the dark.

Out of Town Previewers On the day of the visit  Lookout took a page from Leah  and sheathed herself in a cotton shawl  that cloaked the telling curve  of her neck, the mountain hidden  beneath the mist. They were a curt cluster of pleasantries, wrapped in tight  nods and God is goods, trying on  halls and teachers like hats, sampling  the cafeteria’s shiniest cuisine,   then—having seen what was to be seen—leaving to make a decision  sure to alter their children’s  lives, the lives of their children's  children, the way we all must  take the test before we’ve studied and bear the consequences of all  we didn’t know, those many mountains that of a sudden show their faces bearing down over the baseball field.