Matthew Harrison
If You Have Means
It all depends
on whether
you need a hideaway
and ordinary perks—
trampoline, deck
above the valley, the sun
pulverized in chlorine, nectar
for hummingbirds, ubiquitous
stereo complete
with screeches and howls
of the region—down
a long dead end,
overshadowed, blunt
under blue day
bluer than you
can bring yourself
to believe in, the heat invisible
gum until your sprinkler
system cuts through it,
heat making everything
waver so much you might become
illusion, somebody else’s imagination,
somebody else, and a truce
to leave boundaries to chaparral,
or whether you seek horizontal
rubbings-up-against, the sort
you call plots, nice, grassy
full of lake summers, fireplace
winters, windows and plaster, brass
comfortable to touch, receptive—
the blueprint of this
best witnessed from a night flight:
whatever glimmers below
is your hope’s code
strung over the dark
inevitable, electric threads
foreshadowing your place, and you
nod your vision into the clouded
view, your skin in a shower soon, tongue
in reasonable wine, and your levitating
stomach, and the pop in your ears
meaningful.
Matthew B. Harrison's writing has recently appeared in The Cincinnati Review, The Carolina Quarterly, Gargoyle, Yemassee, Sixth Finch, The Chariton Review, and others. He lives and teaches in Minneapolis.