Sample Poems by Michele Harris

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Bildungsroman

Dodging trucks in vapor trails
of dust, we trekked back roads, we were twelve,
we were alone with the gravel crackling
under us up Bowser's hill. Angie,
now dead, snapped a stalk of shattercane,
slipped it between her lips, and with a quick click
of her thumb, lit it: a dozen winged ants
poured out in her spit. How we walked
to Kelly's house, her windows filled
with strung up bed sheets, her Stepdad
patting her down, reaching into her blouse
to pull out a pack of Marlboro lights.
How I unrolled my sister's hunter green
sleeping bag in the woods beside Camilla Brink
in her wide pink rimmed glasses
when she told me how bad it hurt
getting her cherry popped.
And I didn't say a thing.
Because I didn't know what that meant.
And in a year's time,
how her flat belly would swell
until she disappeared
from school. Angie unzipping her bag, hands
clutching the purple nylon knuckle-hard,
twisting it, rehearsing
for the steering wheel, the loose screeching
brakes, the oak tree in Sligo.
How we felt mosquitos whirring around us
like stars, how we even felt the stars
rising like bugs, their silent hulls
winging the sky, and the next day
before our parents took us
home, when we walked and talked
and smoked, the sun
lit the tip of the sky, the stars
poured out.

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Overdose, December 23
for Sam, 1986-2013

I still think of you with blood
in your teeth, staining

the playground's asphalt.
Third grade, kickball

in the outfield, and you bounding up
to stop a home run, your open mouth

colliding with the metal lip
of the dumpster. I laughed

because I didn't know
you were hurt. Then blood,

the nurse, your front teeth
shattered out of your jaw.

For a week, you disappeared
from class. When you came back,

I was amazed at your two-toned
smile, the knocked-out teeth

magically remade:
the sometimes quickness

of healing. That first day back
you slept the whole bus ride

home, winding through miles
of abandoned farmland,

slag heaps, the unrelenting
orange mouths of wildflowers.

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November 12th on Fenneltown Road

A Lyndora man died at midnight. I listened
to sirens announcing enough smoke

two stations had to slough off flames
tonguing the triple decker's top floor.

It must have burned through the water
in his eyes. And the only picture

in The Leader Times showed singed roof, sucked out
windows, and the red downstairs door

where his shrieking
neighbors had escaped, where two small, faceless

pumpkins freeze on his porch.

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Saving Things

Blood, so little of it-a thud
against our sunflower yellow shutters.
My Uncle and I craned necks

to the gravelly weeds, outskirts
of our driveway, where a winged thing
twitched among the Bunsen flames

of thistle bulbs: Bird, no-bat, the tip
of his right wing bent backward,
cobwebbing threads of bone.

Kneeling, I ripped a stalk
of grass, and feathered it
over the good wing. It straightened

then shut like an accordion.
I dreamed of sneaking sticky fruit
to our root cellar, tweezing

dead moths by their wings
to keep him alive.
I still remember this feeling

breaking open
like the bat
under my Uncle's heel.