We’ve just had a quick surge of bookstore orders for Jerry Harp’s wonderful new book, Urban Flowers, Concrete Plains, and I was reading it this afternoon, waiting for Callum to get back from cub camp.
Jerry Harp in New York ? John Wilkinson
Jerry’s Creature poems are full of poignant, funny, philosophical poems, with a surreal narrative backdrop. His Christian faith shines through the poems, and in his earlier from Salt, called Creature. Anyway, couldn’t resist posting a little piece here. You can now find the book in British bookstores.
Urban Flowers, Concrete Plains
Creature?s Morning Prayer 2
My thermostat was set too high this morning,
So I took a walk among the rocks and stray cats
In the alleys out back, met up
With the iron gate that leads down in the park
Where I never go, and slid
Along a new street where the trees
In leather jackets paid tribute to
Their dusty monarch, the parking lot of a bank.Can?t think what it was that brought me here,
Some movie I must have seen a long time ago.
?When strangers meet abroad, they meet again ?ere long.?
That?s awful. I couldn?t do better.
The pleasures of oblivion float me down their dreams.If you brought me along, if you wrought me out
Of iron, you might have told me how
I could maintain my parts. Pulley belts dissolve
Where once I groaned, moiling in
The atmosphere like a shark out of its depth.
I?m a knife and spoon misarranged
At a table setting, a garden statue representing
A something I?ve never seen before, some variety
Of urban garnish placed to keep the dogs away.Me am ? we is ? I ? some outland rigger
Cantilevered across a plain, a counterpoise
With cruelties left unaccounted for.
Take me down to what I were, reconfigurations,
Balloons released into the air as ?twere, it were.
I am a boredom crossed in mastication,
A script that awakens every morning half erased,
A patch torn off a piece of cloth.I clothe myself in particles
Like berries mixed in mud.
I cull myself to bring a voice along.A crowd of brooding liveries, a cast
Without a play, could you give me the time?
I adore you. I?ve forgotten my next line.
tags: jerry?harp, urban, flowers, concrete, plains, creature
