Things We Aim At
BY BRADLEY HARRISON
Woods shove limbs of us
through broken oaths, broth of bones,
believing the leaves to be
brutally alive, this hand you took
in your hand reeled in rain, yielded
calla lilies through spokes
of frosted shadows. And the throat
worn thin by the land,
windows shuttered to its blowing,
curtains merely stirring
the sleeplessness
you made me.
It will ease my heart a little,
a little while at least, to have cracked
enamel husks, something needling
between us, as the loaded beasts
stumble through the bruised dawn,
trod the drop across the reservoir,
kneel at its corpse and drink.
Woods shove limbs of us
through broken oaths, broth of bones,
believing the leaves to be
brutally alive, this hand you took
in your hand reeled in rain, yielded
calla lilies through spokes
of frosted shadows. And the throat
worn thin by the land,
windows shuttered to its blowing,
curtains merely stirring
the sleeplessness
you made me.
It will ease my heart a little,
a little while at least, to have cracked
enamel husks, something needling
between us, as the loaded beasts
stumble through the bruised dawn,
trod the drop across the reservoir,
kneel at its corpse and drink.
Bradley Harrison grew up in small town Iowa and is a graduate of Truman State University. Currently a Michener Fellow at the University of Texas in Austin, he studies both poetry and fiction and is an editor for Bat City Review. His work can be found in past, current, or forthcoming issues of Gulf Coast, CutBank, The Los Angeles Review, Hunger Mountain, Nimrod, Columbia Poetry Review, The Offending Adam, Memorious and other journals. His dog not-so-recently ate his glasses.