Brooke Harries: TWO POEMS • Cleaver Magazine

Brooke Harries
TWO POEMS

Transformer

Miss him,
…………or drinking coffee in bed,
reading with a lamp at the bedside.

Read an interview with Lou Reed. The one
…………where he stops answering by saying
Nothing I feel like talking about.

Make a gratitude list.
…………Small ankles & wrists.
Think about the logistics of smoking again:

Out back or in front?
…………Invite the dog?
Inventory the smokers in my life. One is weird.

That morning he came up to me reading in bed
…………saying he’s worried,
future ash settled in an abalone ashtray

staring like an eye. His worry was real, was mine,
…………a final sharing. I reached for
some of my clothes, to change out his.

Dog-Sitting Imperatives

Rain like Seattle coming through all the French doors.
To feel a need to escape and count raindrops on banana leaves
through smudged glass and call the days by their numbers
then their names. Each dog has something in it of the soul
of air conditioning, a buoy.

To wait for the poet to come home as the house creaks
and coffee moves me to read. The strain since last winter
like pinched breathing, like a lump in my chest
recurs on the loveseat. You had a tough year, my therapist says,
and I say I guess I’ll have to take comfort in small joys

then list a few. To wash the taste of coffee with a swill
of purified tap water then have another coffee.
And music. To forget to play music until I need it
to write. Outside and inside experiences melding.
This place, packed with books, wooden spoons,
and bouquets, is generous. And death is generous.

Its landscape, if not serene, coated by weather.
To know more words for bad omens than good signs.
On the way here I saw a billboard that said Leg Veins?
To read to learn more, to think of words until life catches up with
all these images of departure, these rusting latches on garden gates.

Brooke Harries’ work has appeared in Arkansas Review, Laurel Review, Puerto del Sol, Salamander, Sixth Finch, and elsewhere. She has an MFA from the University of California, Irvine and is currently pursuing a PhD at the University of Southern Mississippi.