Leslie Harrison is the author of Displacement, published by Mariner Books in 2009. Recent poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Pleiades, FIELD, Subtropics, West Branch, The New Republic, Orion and elsewhere. Awarded a 2011 literature fellowship from The National Endowment for the Arts, she teaches creative writing and literature at Towson University and divides her time between Baltimore and the Berkshires. Her website can be found here. ---------
[What I mean]
You must understand when I say heart when I say broken say
angel god when I say love and say death those huge small words
you must learn to distrust something language me the ravine
harrowed deep between what flickers in the mind and what
stumbles daily into language the way I stumble into woods
walk lost walk directionless walk without path walk allowed
each day only to listen and come later aching crazed and at peace
to some edge river of water dirt or rarely tar and nobody asks
and still what tolls through the night is what did you do today
and you try to remake your day into story into language
I walked I say I listened I sent the blood to punish the heart
that fine red engine I sent the body against again the world
that heavy huge construct one part of which is all I will ever
travel I sent the body so I could feel it there in the forest
the glades thickets rivers feel the heat the heart’s whole house
shaken whole house shuddering I say god say angel though
they may not exist as such though nothing is speaking to
speaking for or through me so what name should I make
for what got caught in this bleak this grief if not heart which
is whole which is never yet broken never even empty listen
dear when I say heart what I mean is maybe boat that slight
quiver small sailed machine tumbled in storm’s grinding teeth
when I say broken what I mean is small craft warning is weather
is storm beyond any storm this body can make or endure what I
mean is too far from shore is maybe no shore is still afloat is
sounding again those old familiar depths and what I mean when
I say depth is fathom meaning how far down to dig a grave
meaning the span of a man’s arms meaning go deeper meaning
I don’t understand
[Otzi]
When the hay wain wound its way across the hill you failed
to follow because winter meant fallow meant cold frozen fields
meant then lost in the icy heights meant also found means found
meant then lost in the icy heights meant also found means found
five thousand three hundred years after they knapped the blade
and you made room for it in your body winter means preservation
means the soul on ice means dead is only one definition means
geography is only one explanation the seasons turn the season turns
colder the mirrors fog over when I breathe meaning I can be visible
be present but not while yet I live and true north is nothing but
a lodestone nothing but another sharp implement pointing to lost
those nearly endless years the body retrieved from the ice rope marks
and scars still visible and pollen that necessary sturdy fruit says head down
in a glacier one blade in your hand one in place of your heart says
when first you were lost the blackthorn was in flower as was the larch
[Over]
When he’s done with them the angels shred in the wind the angels die
like rifles crack sharp and hard metal brittle in bitter cold the angels
die on the wheel the cross the rack birdbones smashed to pollen seed
or snow when it’s over his cold puppets hang tangle in their mute strings
their snarled their tattered wings their teeth gnaw briefly at the gate
they wail and beg but nothing comes back the angels learn then how
to pray the angels learn why prayer requires flesh requires blood
and bone requires bone cut out carved and offered up pray they say
pray as if your meant it as if the bone each prayer is etched upon
was not your own but the arm shin or rib of some sad and lovely child
some fragile perfect being go ahead they say call the baby in
from the abbey walk the colt in from his life between the meadow
and the sky walk him away from the places he believes he is both safe
and at home hide the blade behind your crumbling your serpent spine
and pray pray as if his faith his love his grace his reckless racing life
depends upon it and know that it does and that it does not matter