Sunday, December 09, 2007

TOTAL CHAOS FOREVERMONTH: Matthea Harvey


"Strawberry on the Drawbridge," Matthea Harvey

Bleeding-edge bird humor! Billowing clouds! Affrighted incontinent strawberry! Yeah, I know what you like.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

HORS D’OEUVRES IN BABYLON

“Dost thou think, because thou art virtuous, there shall be no more cakes and ale?... Yes, by Saint Anne; and ginger shall be hot i’ the mouth too.”

1.
There’s the ouroboros
Or Irish elver, succored and suckled
On its very own tail, the walrus
Who swallowed the oyster, most
Loyal pal, ogled, guzzled and gobbled
Her down, till the wall of her fundamental
Mother-of-pearl lisped weakly
From its froth of broth-water
And all this dribbled, star by star,

2.
Into her night liquor jar, patiently
Cellared until worthy Spiritus Mundi,
Which he quaffed, ignoble bugger,
Though he gagged and coughed, but
Nice try, Anonymous, no kell.
Kells is a place with a famous
Monastery and cathedral, a moat
Full of salty, hard-titted
Mermaids, their spell-binding

3.
Drawbridges cased in iridescent
Sequins which lift with scorn
For the accomplishment, their slither
And incessant whisper, Mene Tekel
Upharsin, (You have been weighed!)
Maddening to Nebuchadnezzar,
Who fell to his knees and ate grass,
Get it? Slapping and flopping
Their fish-hips as if splitting

4.
Solomon’s twot-contested
Little Israeli, red as a strawberry
From strewn, not hay turned gray,
Or straw, tart and cleaving itself
With a moist, mute gasp
So it could be cloven and cleave
Until the wet eye of it were
Wild as the sky for a moment,
Ruby blue, if not a whole minute.

Patricia Lockwood said...

I make it so easy for you, don't I?

Anonymous said...

MUTUAL DURANCE

It’s all to the good, the lovely,
Tra-la-la lovely, but blinding
Spectacle-hood of female ontology,
Which re-invents society’s aptitude
For a civilized epistemology
To recompense its servitude to vile
And mortal biology. Take my daughter,
As Roger Dangerfield, dear departed
Clone of Henny Youngman
Might have offered, closer to forty
Than when she performed
With the local Youth Symphony

Stoned for joy or boredom: other
Violin bows descended
Whenever her’s rose, and then
At the supermarket, where we’d gone
To purchase a brick of low-fat
Ice cream–no wonder she was bored–
For a treat and reward, she was abruptly
Busted for concealing a cigarette pack,
And bawled, being vulnerable
And sweet, then as today, her heart
Wide open, her mind
Completely secret.

Anonymous said...

RODNEY DANGERFIELD

As John Keats was heard
To cough and murmur,
"But who was stouter,
Cortez or Balboa?"

Patricia Lockwood said...

What an excellent daughter poem, though I must say--low-fat ice cream? Worst reward ever, and I, for one, would have bitten you.

Anonymous said...

DINNER WITH SLOBBER NOSTRIL

The elephant’s prehensile grip
Tipping crab apples as if life
Depended on extract
Of ruby bitterness
Or meerschaum peanuts
Transported with swift, shameless
Awkwardness to get cracked
In its fumble chew
And mumbling, thin-lipped
Hairiness, its needs
Mammoth, its equanimity bored
And murderous, you’d rather
Lick strawberry juice
And not mess with it.

Patricia Lockwood said...

Have a delicious holiday, resident genius. I will return taller and older.