L.R. Harvey Poetry

thirteen perspectives on the poet I. She presses her cheek against the world's chest, recording what she hears.  II. She speaks in color for  the hard of ear and music for the hard of eye.  III. She holds her pen like eggshells— she knows that what's inside is fragile. IV. She writes and so participates. V. She says ‘the sun is green’ and makes it green. VI.  She scurries up a ladder of light. VII.  She pulls, unraveling the knot of what is trite. She ties it in a bow. VIII. She doesn’t fully comprehend  and doesn’t wish to.  IX. Sometimes she tugs and bends a thing until it breaks. X. She paints in blood. You want to believe that blood is beautiful. XI. Her pen  grows inky legs  and beetles off to find itself. XII.  The world is her goal. XIII. Sometimes she breaks,  sometimes makes whole.

curb-side conversations and nothing is new Open their mouths and let them speak. Bedded in primrose, the white one tells of love that's ocean deep but sundered by sea, of inky kisses hiding in manila envelopes, breathed on notebook paper in purple cursive, weighed down by nautical miles and automated tax-forms. A couple yards down the crooked one stands laughing at the world, reminding passersby they too are just a little off, they too are often nothing but an empty mouth. The grey one knows of loss. Across the way, the one shaped like a birdhouse holds not birds but bills, peering out coolly from their plastic windows while in the shuttered room behind a couple blames the other for the state of things. 'It’s all a little purple,’ the violet one laughs, and sets the neighbors laughing. How absurd it all is. A host of them hold high their scarlet hands and itch to spill the tea, while it is but ...