Lois Marie Harrod

For as Long as a Paragraph

I was a child in a sentence,
one that began simply
before twisting into knowledge
while I somehow remained
ignorant as I wandered
its  terraces and trees, never guessing
the flesh that might be contained
in the maneuvers of doves and bees,
all those dos and do nots
humming over my head like a territorial tongue,
does and stags at the lawn’s edge,
and beyond a constrictor
fencing me from farther on,
a precarious phrase that seemed harmless,
parenthetical to my existence,
unheeded and unobserved,
but all the time assuming
that the world in all its complexity
was something that could be understood.

---

You're Toast

Flask the tea to understand the throat.
Gorge the river, flood and trickle, to know
the flood–how we sighed as we floated
from one great stiff to the next, rowing

from state to state, wasn’t this desire–
this furious motion to forget the corpse?
Tell me what you want, what you require,
come to me, contain, which transport

to content? anxiety? Which are we about? Leaves
sodden in their little bag, drink them down,
even the frog leaves his bubbles of seed
in the water, this is how love sounds

to the bridge, water enters the mouth,
burbles into the belly and then out.

---

Placebo

Pansy
of thought,
muse-mary
of remembrance,
leaf the leaf
or petal
you trust
as you rely
on rust
to dismiss
iron,
sic transit.
The strangely akin,
say the sun rising
with cruciferous
abandon
cures the crucified,
you’ve seen
the crux--
lavender,
dandelion,
peppermint
with its square stem,
even the skeptic
holds a bit
beneath his tongue,
and it speaks
when he can’t
believe,
that sort of faith:
fold this speck
and slip it under
your glass of water,
sip, drink.