Monday Oct 07

Harrison Poetry Matthew Bruce Harrison's writing has recently appeared or is forthcoming inThe Texas Review, Sixth Finch, The Cincinnati Review, The Carolina Quarterly, The Saint Ann's Review, Yemassee, Crab Creek Review, and others. He lives in Minneapolis.
---------




You Said It


He tips one
last one
to the absence

masquerading
as a chair drawn
close

to the mass
of suicidal
mosquitos

that wrong the light
from the wax
cavity

near spent
like us all—smoke-dyed
candle on the bier

posed as a patio
table. He toasts
the glaring hole: There

you go, cholesterol, cost
of gas killing, social
security and a saw blade

jammed into my tailbone,
Jesus, a septic tank
leak and this block a spa

for venereal bugs,
youngbloods—always
the microscopic stuff

lives on. Lawn
a mangy troll back
passed over, shotgun

mess of a home soon
paid off, I guess. Look
straight: walls, webs. You

can say no different. You sat here
lit April a year back today
and revealed too much meaning

we needed a game quick.
So we took up napkins.
We cut masks with butter

knives—grim Cheney, grinning
Bill. We sucked in the paper
lips and blew faces

into the citronella flame.
Just like I said, you said,
and I said You said it,

and that was it, ashes of a bad
farewell and our bug-bite
scabs in the grass.