inaugural post: Matthea Harvey
The Future Terror/7
From the gable window, we shot
at what was left: gargoyles and garden gnomes.
I accidentally shot the generator
which would have been hard to gloss over
in a report except we weren’t writing reports
anymore. We ate our gruel and watched
the hail crush the hay we’d hoped to harvest.
I found a handkerchief drying on a hook
and without a hint of irony, pocketed it.
Here was my hypothesis: we were inextricably
fucked. We’d killed all the inventors and all
the jesters just when we most needed humor
and invention. The lake breeze was lugubrious
at best, couldn’t lift the leaves. As the day
lengthened, we knew we’d reached the lattermost
moment. The airlift wasn’t on its way. Make-believe
was all I had left but I couldn’t help but see
there was no “we”—you were a mannequin
and I’d been flying solo. I thought about how birds
can turn around mid-air. About how
the nudibranch has no notion it might need
a shell. Swell. I ate the last napoleon—
it said Onward! on the packaging. There was one
shot left in my rifle. So this is how you live
in the present. I polish my plimsolls.
I wrap myself in a quilt. I re-ink
my note (for nobody) and I’m ready.
Terror Of The Future / 7
Sweetheart, there’s no one on the street.
I attached the speakers to the steeple
but even on its loudest setting, the stereo
gets no reaction. If you ask me, (ask me,
please) the split screen of the brain
needs a sounding board, doesn’t like the only
signals in the skyway to be its own synapses,
doesn’t want to go solo in the sandbox.
You’re. Not. Breathing. Let’s see: memories.
I remember the rocking chair that was always
in the repair shop for liking to rock backward
but not forward. I remember the price
of a pressurized suit. I remember the red ribbon
in your hair. I remember when pandemonium
was possible. O there’s no way to nectarize this moment—
it’s entirely without sweetness. In just a minute
it’ll be match point and of course the world wins.
It’s not a matter of life-and-death, it’s life or
death. Here in the grove, after jar after jar
of grain alcohol, the sun looks like a halo,
then a noose. Give me a helping hand,
historian. Help me with that “or.”
Stolen From BOMB/ Best American Poems of 2007
