Two Poems by Kevin Armor Harris

I carry this noose

I carry this noose around in case anyone needs it, they only have to ask. After each use, I untie it, wash it thoroughly, and reconstruct it carefully. Those are sad days, after it’s been used, when I’m waiting for the fibres to dry and don’t feel I can go out. One matronly lady has tried it several times, just can’t seem to get on with it but credit to her for trying I say, it doesn’t suit everyone. It certainly suited one feller who sought to sport it, décor de moribondage, at a party that went wrong, or right, or both perhaps, things can be both right and wrong, in the end, it seems. Sometimes I think I should get more up to date, maybe offer some of these fashionable nylon numbers, you can have a range of colours, I expect the townsfolk would like that. But I’m a traditionalist, I grew up with the touch of yarn, the plies and braids of hemp, the artificial is not for me.

 

I went to the sage

I went to the sage to ask if she would take me as a student. A long journey through four seasons. She spoke quietly and simply, glancing at me from time to time as she drew skillfully on a sheet. This had the effect of making me try to keep very still, without having been asked, but it also caused me to be slightly inattentive. Finally she explained that I was not ready to be her student, and gave me the portrait, so that I understood immediately. Thus am I able to say, I have learned directly from the wisdom of the sage.

 

Kevin Armor Harris

Three Poems by Edward Johnson

TRESPASS

 

To the North, a thickening,

smog or haze, fog or smoke,

nature made or someone to blame?

My mom FaceTimes me. She spotted another

rando perspiring in her tomatoes.

On one level I’m nearly certain

these creepers don’t exist. But who knows?

They keep us on our toes.

On screen we vibrate—one box

in Oregon, one in Indiana.

She tells me that the last time

my lips were purple like this

I had thrush. She tells me that she’s

rewatching Downton Abbey and

that it’s astounding

how much she missed the first time.

As she talks, bugs

kamikaze the screened-in porch,

guitar chords from the canyon,

a drop in pressure,

an alertness, crickets.  

A shadow moves behind her,

along the privacy fence

tip-toeing the property line.

THE NOISE

 

Sea mist salts the lips out here

where the red edge of earth plunges

into the misnamed sea as we power

through our daily practice.

Mindfulness is mindlessness.

Drain your head like a dirty bathtub.

Profit has Progress pinned in the grass.

Static crashes in from headquarters.

Someone misgendered someone’s child.

Meanwhile, the corporate oligarchs

and their oxy-addicted serfs

have simplified their non-fluid gameplan:

the rich get richer, the poor get poorer,

the sick get sicker, the earth gets warmer.

These aggressions require no microscope.

You see them on the bodycam footage,

you smell them when our cities burn,

you hear them when our neighbors are taken away.

An oil derrick humps itself

back toward darkness and fossil.

Pelicans kamikaze, catch as catch can.

A few hate-filled precincts have yet to report.  

Villagers await their blood-stained sheet.

Our better selves have been gerrymandered

into deformed Lego dragons

and we’ve lost the ability to breathe,

to acknowledge the reality of the breeze,

to understand which way the wind blows.

The purveyors of wellness know this,

so they flutter down on gossamer wings

and devour us whole like cocktail wieners. 

PANGOLIN UNFURLING

  April 2020

 

Things were bumping along 

then we awoke under house arrest,

a predator in the mist,

our reality hyphenated, asterisked,

ellipses spilled across the floor.

Our experts had misread the recipe,

transposed the pinch of faith

with the dollop of science.

The bunkered typists twitched

and spat: It’s the Chinese! 

The liberals! The homeless!

We all stewed in our juices.

The Oregon Health Authority urged

everyone to press pause on rimming.

Pure entropy knocked on the door

looking for all the world like the delivery person

taking a proof of life photo of our dinner.  

Randomness is like that.

It wants us to see patterns,

the beginnings of order.

Language is a hurricane of faith,

punctuation a thief.

The anti-maskers demanded

that the economy be reopened,

especially the part that sells teeth.

Puzzle, by Pravasan Pillay

I get onto the subway train at Liljeholmen. It’s seven on a Friday evening. I’ve finished my shift at the store and I’m heading home. The train is filled but there are still a lot of free seats. I sit down at a four-seater, diagonally across from a young man. We’re the only two sitting there.

I glance over to the young man. It is mid-June, summer in Stockholm, and he’s dressed in a pair of loose khakis, a short sleeve shirt, and sandals. He’s slim, clean-shaven, balding, and is wearing wire-rimmed glasses.  

The young man is holding a square of folded newspaper in one hand, and in the other hand, a squat yellow pencil. From where I’m sitting I can see that it’s one of those number grid puzzles.

I’m impressed by how he has folded the newspaper. The square is around 10cmx10cm, fits easily into his palm, and has a narrow border of white space around the grid, which I assume is either for rough work or because it’s pleasing to his eye.

The back of the square is also impressive. It’s clear that he hasn’t cut or torn the puzzle out of the newspaper, but, instead, has folded the sheet into itself, like a piece of origami, without any of its edges showing. I imagine that this method also provides a degree of padding while he’s writing.

I shift my eyes to the seat beside the young man. There’s a plastic carrier bag on it – from the top of the bag, I make out a five-kilogram sack of basmati rice. The rice sack has a built-in handle, so a carrier bag seems unnecessary. It’s possible, however, that he finds the carrier bag’s handles more comfortable.

I return to the young man. I notice that he’s not actually writing on his square. Instead his pencil hovers over the empty grid. I see from the movements on his lips that he’s doing calculations.

The train stops at Mariatorget. The driver announces that there has been a problem on another train, and, soon thereafter, a throng of passengers pile onto our train. I spot a harried-looking mother and her son. I get up, and offer them my seat. The young man moves his rice sack, and lays it flat on his lap.

A minute later, I get off at Slussen to change trains. I watch the young man through the window as the train pulls away. It looks like he’s started writing.