a poem by Matthew Harrison

Matthew Harrison

Matthew Harrison

Matthew B. Harrison's writing has recently appeared in Sixth FinchThe Cincinnati Review, Gargoyle, The Carolina Quarterly, Ping PongYemassee, 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.