poem || Jeff Harrison

Bonfire Of Psychoanalysis

you could play
chess with the
shadier elements
of her story

you call white, &
she the black pieces
pulled up from streets
unforeseen

or you could both play
with
thimbles

you could use the thimbles
with
blasts beneath them
in the four-moon-one-tree night
one bird,
whose reflection's a branch
one branch,
whose mirror's a bird
one gale,
whose glass is a branch
a branch
whose secret double's
the palm of your hand -
listen, you -

picking antique out of silver
she's lost her tongue, she's bonfire of
psychoanalysis
medicine keeps her secret (double's
the silver feather in her wing)
sleep rewrites her million (of doll-ars,
of wings), she hoooooooooooooots
"inability abuses permanence"
out of her left-side mouth &
"slumber ENDANGERS timetables"
out of her right-hand mouth

bonfire of
psychoanalysis,
what hummingbird do you
hold in your beak?

below you sleep a thousand stallions
the hummingbird's shadow fallllllllllls upon