Matthea Harvey is the author of three books of poetry, Pity the Bathtub Its Forced Embrace of the Human Form (Alice James Books, 2000), Sad Little Breathing Machine(Graywolf, 2004), and Modern Life (Graywolf, 2007). She teaches poetry at Sarah Lawrence and lives in Brooklyn.
To cut through night you’ll need your sharpest scissors. Cut around the birch, the bump of the bird nest on its lowest limb. Then with your nail scissors, trim around the baby beaks waiting for worms to fall from the sky. Snip around the lip of the mailbox and the pervert’s shoe peeking out from […]
The ham flowers have veins and are rimmed in rind, each petal a little meat sunset. I deny all connection with the ham flowers, the barge floating by loaded with lard, the white flagstones like platelets in the blood-red road. I’ll put the calves in coats so the ravens can’t gore them, bandage up the […]
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 […]
Everyone was happier. But where did the sadness go? People wanted to know. They didn’t want it collecting in their elbows or knees then popping up later. The girl who thought of the ponies made a lot of money. Now a month’s supply of pills came in a hard blue case with a handle. You […]
Last year I made up a baby. I made her in the shape of a hatbox or a cake. I could have iced her & no one would have been the wiser. You know how trained elephants will step onto a little round platform, cramming all four fat feet together? That’s her too, & the […]
We’re the anemones guarding the gates of infinity, the boats squidding in the bay. In the flooded fish market, dead fish, live fish—who took you to the Tuileries for a rose- scented swim? Turn the world & the page is pink. Frond-fond & pond-proud, we sugar the obstacle dark. […]
Today’s class 3-Deifying: Godgrass, Godtrees, Godroad. A sheet of geese bisects the rainstorm. The water tower is ten storms full. We practice drawing cubes- That’s the house squared away & the incubator with Baby. The dead are in their grid. O the sleeping bag contains the body but not the dreaming […]
