Copyright © 2020 Otis Nebula Press. All rights reserved.
Copyright © 2020 Otis Nebula Press. All rights reserved.
Book of Hours 7
It’s an outcry and overcry
tonight, this not
that I am, this knotted-up
swarm.
What are you? Out-weathering,
ancient and unafraid
before even darkness was,
and what an and that and was
when you revved it.
My waking comes on like a chill
in pieces
touched away and you.
Book of Hours 30
Blank and still, I wait, growing
blanker and stiller in the still, blank night.
The rain starts up again, and because the wind
picks up, it’s an emblem of my mind,
no less absent for its turbulence.
I’ve been a turn that never turns, a book that never
comes off the shelf, pages musty
but moving through the millions with who knows
what light and dark matter? Beside the porch,
the lilac bushes are over.
What is eternity if not a long, long time,
like coffee, sex, and death embracing everything?
The bruising sky at sunset becomes a deeper wound,
the cut I am returning to a darkening sound
of ravens congregating in the trees.
Why does your voice sound like mine, notes
in empty space, gravitation’s tocks?
In this lighted city, and in the dark,
I sit in restless peace that is mine and not,
and there you are, savage, silent, waiting.
Book of Hours 31
Say this for once: twice is all I have,
I mourn and mourn and call it a day.
Already I’m my own corpse here in the shade
where my toenails grow even though
there hasn’t been life here for days.
But here she comes, my other one, with her songs,
worries, and plans—what is there but to go along?
I don’t keep calendars anyway,
and the tool and die works have closed their doors,
meaning the ghost of my machinist father
has nowhere to haunt but my dreams.
Hi, Dad, how have you been around all this time
in your black turtleneck and slacks
like an actor fresh from the Forty-Second-
Street stage? Whatever angels there may be,
let them terrify and sing to your rest.
Meanwhile, I’m decaying piecemeal,
and my meaningful other claps and marches on.
Jerry Harp’s books include “Creature,” “Gatherings,” and “Spirit under Construction.” His short story "Marathon" is forthcoming in Mississippi Review. He teaches at Lewis and Clark College.
Triin Paja