Breathless (Freewrite in 3 parts)
Posted by Alysia Harris | Filed under Poetry, Print
I. You scare me
Into circles.
Into dimples I can’t trust.
Like a smile-automaton.
II. What if I told you, I’ve never seen soil like your soul before,
perfect for growing.
What if I told you,
Your heart was so pure it doesn’t beat;
it blooms.
I think there’s spring inside you.
But I vowed no more muses, no more dragon headed rose bushes
With beautiful faces and thorn fangs.
No more writing wishes
And farewell kisses urgent
as words in boldface.
But in less than a stanza,
You wooed me into the room, like the first cries of a lone violinist
In an empty auditorium.
Plucking imperfections.
Saying if life is a tune
Then I just want to play it better.
How on God’s green earth am I back here, in the same field
With garden tools and orchid bruise still fresh
But your fruit is still fresher.
Believing in resurrection- that life rises from dirt.
Despite all the hurt,
I still know harvest when I see it.
III. I used to be a statue, transfixed stone
Staring at the pretty boy with snakes in his hair.
Come winter, when my skin turns to marble
You can still see his fingerprints there-
fissures and cracks
His handiwork.
But like I said before…
You garden you.
Tender farmer, unharden.
This pile of bricks. You are building me into butterfly hive.
Honey shrine. Stomach can’t sit still and stew no more.
Gotta break free.
Belly got wings. The heights are in my bowels.
Feeding me a smattering of stars.
Every constellation, I mean conversation with you
is like the dropping of bread crumbs-
The littlest bit draws the whole heaven.
So don’t be an angel quoting scripture one minute
And the next be a vulture talking with your mouth full.
Don’t follow me like a guardian and then follow me like a scavenger
I’ve been a skeleton before.
Please don’t scare me.
Be a laughing field of jasmine, opening my night.
Be gentle, be light, be feather, and float.
Can’t fly.
Only fall.
All I got is lungs
with air in them.
Don’t rob me
yet.
The Graduate
Posted by Alysia Harris | Filed under Poetry, Print
Living is a rather qualitative endeavor.
New Haven is a smushed place.
The details taste like soup.
I spend 7 days in a room with curtains
Dark enough to brag of midnight,
In a college building full of identitical offices,
the saving grace of which is one bleached leather couch,
Which has probably subsisted on a fodder of
Dropped crackers and late night epiphanies.
But even it’s gone bulimic these days.
I spend all my best nights with a guy whose
Smile makes me want to sin.
I don’t really know much else about him.
Spent my worst night with a man whose mouth
was a pindrop in an ocean.
Kissing him a vaccination you cover with gauze.
I spent all of my best mornings at the same computer,
Thinking if my life has ever been more irreligious
More uneventful, less inspired.
But I cannot toss the salt over my shoulder
And say people are still worth writing about.
Their walks don’t testify to mysteries.
They are simple, hardly beasts,
They don’t bare their fangs or even panseys.
They move like ordinary houseflies
past the lampshade of drooped eyelids.
Or maybe I am the sick fly,
Never meeting my death in their curious glow.
Either way, there is one woman
Who might be different.
Cigarette smoke beautified her voice a long time ago.
Her dirt road laugh reminds me of old and forgotten people
Who lived too fast and
keep the burnt tire treads
in their lungs as momentos.
She sells flowers (which look more like weeds)
wrapped in recycled academic papers.
I never need to buy a flower. But every day I wish I did.
I mean really wish I needed those ugly undersized mums more than anything.
Then she could be a sort of savior or something.
But I never buy or even take one when she offers.
We just talk instead.
Looking at her is so inviting.
All the fat seems to gather at the top, excitedly spilling out of her
Like foam in a mug of beer.
This makes her quiet suitable for hugs, and getting drunk with
and of course… writing about.
I always hope to see her. She keeps me grounded.
And in the humdrum of the day to day,
Reading articles
And pretending to know whats going on
6 years from now I can imagine
My dissertation looking ever so smart
Wrapped around homegirl’s flowers.
Null
Posted by Alysia Harris | Filed under Poetry, Print
No one is muse. Numb
ink clots my pen full of _____
as I paint abortions.
Untitled Admission
Posted by Alysia Harris | Filed under Poetry, Print
I think in one word sentences.
You.
Me.
Forever.
Once.
