L.R. Harvey Poetry

moth + Friends I too find Jennifer Anniston pretty, which  is why I noticed when she grew a mole  between laugh tracks—                                    perhaps you thought that it’s  the one where Rachel sees a dermatol- ogist, or maybe nail-clip feathered wings  just need their rest. Regardless, you’re not the first to make this Columbian journey, navigating  in the night and washing up on shores unknown.    Science calls it phototaxis , transverse orientation , and other names that intellectualize your mysterious  affinity for late-night Georgia games,  the chipping cab light in my Silverado, the LED that pops like candy rocks  and bags your pebble corpses down below  its sticky shine.  ...

Invocation of the Muse, kitchen sink Sing and soak me free. Scrape off the rice  that’s crusted thick along the bottom of  my skillet mind, and let the Dawn go slicing through this grease-thick pan to loose my pork-fat tongue. Wash milky words from corners long unscrubbed. Flip over the spoon  beneath my flow of thought and let me soak the world. 

1930's New Haven Westinghouse clock From mantle-top to unforgiving brick  and down the dust-thick basement steps it sunk  like bone, fossilized beneath a stack  of Reader’s Digest  deep in the house’s strata.  With feline curves the whisker second hand  arches its back to scrape the foggy glass,  warped by what it counts. The oak-wood stand  is coated yellow with years. T he door in the back  ajar, rust-red gears are interlocked  in arthritic prayer, and footsteps up above  are all that mark the rhythmic tock and tick  of time: another thing, like me, that breaks itself. - published in 21st Century Flow

Hrothgar at Night Crickets go still as headless corpses, stiffen  the night with silence —    Beside you, Wealtheow  breathes rhythmic breezes on your neck, but in  the gulping throat of Grendel’s night it sounds  to you like thirsty sighs. You’ve dug the divet  on the ceiling above your bed with sleepless stares,  encased your hall in dream-tossed sighs, but it  is not the roaming monster of the mere that haunts your sleep. I t's sludging through you now,  sinking its teeth in tired knees, clouding  your mind with its poison breath.  Last night, I found  my first grey hair — I dug a divet of my own.

Qu Pry it apart, the way you’re taught to do  with most good things—                                  poems, a cow’s eye, pairs  of polynomials—                      and watch it go  from sounds as round as the river-tumbled quartz you nestled in your palm last week as if  it were an egg,  to cold, metallic as  the cliq of girls who smack their gum and click  their red-nailed thumbs on qwerty keyboards.  Has  it ever occurred to you that people change  when separated?     Find someone, something— Let it glue itself to your right side, smooth down ...

untold Canterbury Tales He died before his quill could scratch                 the man  with veiny legs, his shorts hitched up above  the waist with a thrift-store braided belt, scanning  the menu like he doesn’t already know  he wants the avocado toast, no crust.  With him they laid to rest                the barista’s tale,  a yarn of caffeine loves that never last the afternoon, of steamy nights with girls  he’ll never meet, scanning across the counter wishing he were a stirring stick. He took  with him the story of the meter enforcer,  a moral sketch about power trips and sleek  grey Teslas with drivers who clearly cannot read— or maybe it was a pithy quip about  that pair of cargo ...

Telemachus has got me thinking: how can I plan my world in a sane  and thoughtful way?*   Try lying flat, shirtless,  on linoleum kitchen tile, and see the spin  of long-dead skin cells vortex in meaningless  tornadoes around the room.     Or, crack a piece of ice from the pimpled tray, then center it  (just right) beneath the coiled metal beak of the kitchen sink—                   with thumb and finger, twist  the left-hand knob and watch the creature drool  its hot saliva, burrowing inside as if it’s seeking something. Try drawing O’s  with thick-tipped pens— blue fatboy sharpies work best: observe the way they shrink like light-filled pupils,  collapse like weekend plans or Spring-break love.  If thin...