Matthew Harrison
Matthew B. Harrison's writing has recently appeared in Sixth Finch, The Cincinnati Review, Gargoyle, The Carolina Quarterly, Ping Pong, Yemassee, JMWW, and others. He lives and teaches in Minneapolis.
Memos to Remote Love Interests
1
Let me ride
in this form
without organs,
without aim,
lighter than all
air. Floating
light-bulb
poesies
have core flames
to blast
errors
into slow balloons.
They go, full
of poise, buoyant
exclamation marks
over the sad
grammar
of subdivisions,
void of destinations
like us.
2
Below, dung
beetles ball dung
and navigate
to constellations,
and lovers urinate
solo
while shooting
stars whiz above.
Cassiopeia,
Cancer, Sculptor
and the bright dead
rest care less
about our dotted paths
down here,
our photographic bags
of air: all our baggage
in the sky,
on the highways,
all our shit
always dropping.
3
Comets
can still augur
second comings
but none of this
is actual mapping.
I am talking
of choreographed
jettisons too close
or distant for us
to see or listen to
with as much glee
as television.
4
Blimps exist.
Satisfied
in form,
archaic
as blue whales
in the remotest blue.
5
When parachutes open,
wind makes them bob
and other verbs,
like drop,
as they drop—
sky jellyfish,
if you like—
to Earth, where
somewhere a whale
comets a spume.
6
Elsewhere:
polluted streets.
Who wipes the dirt
from shop windows
on the streets
and what do we need
to see inside?
Models of anything
but locomotives.
We have seen enough
locomotives
in juvenile dreams
reflected in windows
in TV movies.
Even small globes
will do
if they will open
to spirits
and cocktail glasses:
entertainment
globes for sale
with stained bottles
inside them.
Why?
Because the dream
of worlds
inside bottles
is over.
7
Once there was glass
over the sky
cracking. So,
bygone lovers,
I was not the first
to throw the stone.