ABOUT

CONTENTS

EDITORIAL

ARCHIVE

LAGNIAPPE

MAST

SUBMISSIONS

 
TWO POEMS
by Matthea Harvey


YOU'RE MISS READING

Engine: 


All bright thought lay in future thought.

The coin was in the puddin hid.

Cod from the machine will not do,
said the dramaturg-turned-nutritionist.

Only the upper echelons could afford to be
nonchalant about it. They were, as in, oh.

It was the first time a lost Jocelyn
& a found Jocelyn had turned out

to be not one & the same.
The trial continued.

You're Miss Reading, aren't you?
                                                      Yes.
& you still refuse to name
the cake in question?

                                                      Earlier in the hearing, I considered
                                                      relenting, but now that you put it
                                                      that way--yes.

 

POEM INCLUDING THE SEVEN WONDERS OF THE WORLD

The hologram hostas swung softly
in their macrame swing. If only

Alice would stop hitting her head
on the ceiling, but a body

Will Up. It was like croquet, really,
the way some ideas went through:

love triangle instead of lust-
isoceles, Mama flashing a mirror

so we'd find our way home.
Another shift of the kaleidscope

& a little girl is hunting
marbles beneath the trees &

Chairman Mao, so lean and mistrustful
is studying the plans for his heli-car.

The thing is, of course, where to land.

Matthea Harvey's first book, Pity the Bathtub Its Forced Embrace of the Human Form, was published by Alice James Books. She is poetry editor for American Letters & Commentary and lives in Brooklyn.