Joseph Harms
PLURISY
Maybe you got a kid, maybe you got a pretty wife
But the only thing that I got’s been bothering me my whole life
……………….Bruce Springsteen
How come the night is long?……………….
……………….Leonard Cohen
Light Years: plurisy, renewed nostalgia for each moment
as it goes, the dream returning as it’s escaping. / His wife’s
demonic pain, his fuckall, to have failed separately
too long too much together, by the minutes ganged, contemned,
the plausive vale unseen discalled and hated. / Snow takes hours
(ensouled idea) in inhuming lawnstrewn xmaslights
until the mind no longer trusts its sight and they are felt
more so (as wolves howl obbligatos impossible to
kyoteyips)…chrysoprasing sawplaying undulations
midnighting northern cusp. / Lightyears: we are the light between
that never hits a thing, the tortoise found in dreams, the map
recalled on shell, the tremulosity, the space between two hells.
A finalist for the 2015 National Poetry Series Award for his sonnet sequence Bel (Expat Press), Joseph Harms is the author of the novels Baal and Cant, as well as the forthcoming Evil Trilogy (Expat Press). His work has appeared in numerous literary journals, including Boulevard, The Alaskan Quarterly Review, The North American Review, The International Poetry Review, The Opiate and Bayou Magazine.
Image credit: Aperture Vintage on Unsplash
Read more from Cleaver Magazine’s Issue #23.
