poem || Jeff Harrison

Porphyry Gardens

semi-dark belly
two patients
to, ha ha, write
a year at hand
   out tongues, new works of the storm, sticks...

blind duck
coastwise schooner
spellbound verse
banking circles
   ...to no novelty, not even a trolley car

national capital
crispy unknown
robe authority
robbed wet event
   many oh yeah many meters of muskeg, swamp...

oil shales
untimely death
dashing waves
veneered mahogany
   ...tundra, & glacial debris, well maybe not that many

sea serpent lair
trail boards
steel-grey hoards
lips at the mouth
   scenes of wild grandeur peculiar to our nation

gathering wood
firm sentimentality
total nostalgia lack
commercial stanza
   when the giants arrive, the circus is coming

public unfitness
unfititude? someday!
butcher incision
mettlesome horses
  we shall don buckskins & go about armed to the fangs...

waking dream
unbroken façade
tombstone floozies
glorious heroines
  ...rebuked & mortified by complaints of our woeful nudity

boring boy wing
cherub Dillinger
flanking pavilions
crude boomings
  into a desert of dirt, dust, mud, & wind

superb view
gravel wall
two-headed calves
colossal order
  the plain lives of sea shells have nothing on us