Issue 4.2
Summer 2024
Robert Harlow
Reflection
I don't know where this poem came from. Just one of those odd thoughts / phrases that created its own sensibilities beginning with the first couple of lines. It's more surreal rather than something that happened in reality. I like the movement created from stanza to stanza. The ending seems logical given what comes before it, but there's also no logic that I can see or remember when I wrote it. It is also one of the few poems of mine that almost wrote itself, taking as long to read as it did to write. Almost no revision. A lucky gift.
Probably
Am I the only one
who loves the taste of fire?
Glass on the tongue,
shards in the mouth?
It’s almost like the taste
of wounded bracelets
or scolded rain sent through the mail
with no return address
so they have to find a new home
just like the rest of us
when something similar occurs.
Wondering if it’s possible
to live without being excited
by the promise of new adventures
syruped with flames, the promise
of a bruising new cuisine?
Sparks, embers, slivers,
liquid curled on the tongue.
Maybe fire as the reason why,
at least for now, I’ve chosen
to be remembered like this.
Robert Harlow resides in upstate NY . He is the author of Places Near and Far (Louisiana Literature, 2018). His poems appear in Poetry Northwest, RHINO, The Midwest Quarterly, and elsewhere. Or so he has been led to believe.
Robert's Book Recommendations
Laura Jensen—Bad Boats
Darcy Smith—River Skin
Laura Kasischke
Dianne Suess
Larry Levis