L.R. Harvey Poetry

GIVING UP I’m losing my desire to be clever. As much as I believe  words serve to show us what  we need to say, lighting the way,  today, at least, I think I know, so  to hell with “show don’t tell.”   I think instead I’ll strip naked , cup my hands  to my mouth and shout  the bare essence of  exactly what I’m going for  and nothing more:  Honeysuckle! Cucumber plant!  Cicada song! Sleepy toddler! Home! Home! Truth! Dirt! Home! If they lead me away, slapped with a charge of public  disturbance, at least I’ll know  it worked:      words led me  to something firm and real,  unveiled as these four concrete walls I'll scribble them on.

PICKLING If I disappear before the cucumbers come in, slice them thin and spread them across the cutting board like the ashes we scattered over the garden in October.  There is a flat of Bell jars  in top of the kitchen cabinet.  Make pickles. I wasn't stingy with the seeds, meaning  you shouldn’t run short. Store them in some quiet, dark  place where only you  hold the key, and make your way  down there all Winter long, hearing the seal open like  a drawn breath and the fleshy  crunch between your teeth  like the pop my knees  would make as I got out of bed.  Taste both the vinegar  and the sweet. If I planned right it will carry you to Spring. 

EMERGENCE Seventeen plus thirteen equals eight thousand aliens crackling in the breeze of an oak tree  like deep-fried air, even more piling up below in a thick, leggy  mulch. Supposedly, in their long subterranean anticipation,  cicadas taste time in the fluid  of tree roots they sip on,  though scientists refuse to confirm whether that’s screaming we hear as they’re wrenched into the world like a bad tooth or harmony as they lilt their way to light. What we can confirm   is that based on the taste  of the root we’re drawing from,  we too are getting close  to the surface. Soon exoskeletons  will crunch beneath our feet like the hollow shells of selves we nibbled on to quell our evening ache. Soon  this red-eyed desire to rip a hole  in our backs and climb out of our skin will be something more  than an aphid dream you can't seem to shake, and with a roar   we’ll vanish into the eternal note, disappearing ...

BRIEF NOTE ABOUT HOW THINGS WORK AROUND HERE Next! Here’s a pamphlet with all  the pertinent information. It will tell you what and exactly why . If you find  it’s in a language you were never taught to read, every third page with a key  passage burned out from the ash of history’s bad habit, get over it. Quick: you’ve got what equates to about ten minutes before they open the door  and pluck it from your hands, demanding you make a decision that will shift the trajectory of  more worlds than this one, then stumble up to take to the stand and stammer a word or two in defense of whatever it is you've done. Questions? No time for that.  And don't forget to have fun!

LOOKING BACK Come the boardroom review at the end of first quarter there will be  an imbalance in the budget: payments  never received cause never paid,  or payments paid but mis-wired  to the wrong account. In most cases it doesn’t add up to an amount  meriting bankruptcy, window-shutter,  but it does serve to explain what remains  of the account manager’s time here: her penchant to scrap a penny or two  in unexpected investments, his odd routine  of drifting to sleep between perfectly  even sheets, and then that recurring dream  of some high-level exec whose face they can never see stooping over  to kiss their foreheads the way their parents never did, whispering go back to sleep sweetie, I’ll take it from here .

  THE PATRON SAINT OF CHICKAMAUGA MOWS MY YARD It’s true: stare long  enough and the icon’s  eyes begin to move,  back and forth like an anamorphic  chant at the temple  of the Toro Zero- Turn, offering up  the incense of  fresh-cut grass  and interceding  on your behalf as you venerate  him with a nod  and a glass of holy  water clinking with ice.