Two Poems by Jerry Harp

CREATURE'S INTRODUCTION

I’m told I’m one in a series.
Anonymous messages arrive in the mail
Detailing factory rebates

And opportunities for extended phone lines.
I search in vain for posters bearing my likeness.
The answers I receive on the street

Tell me that I must have been altered.
The photographs I take turn up blank.
If I speak deferentially and stare

At the ground, eventually someone
Calls my name. I never can tell what they’re thinking.
Sometimes I wonder am I thinking at all.

But I’m no reprobate. I am no throwback.
Standing in line I hear people laugh.
I go out running under stars.

I improvise rhythms on the trees.
A world unto myself, I’m no one’s champion,
And I never could please my woman.

Perhaps this is why she went away, hopped
On a motorcycle with a scrawny, tattooed man
Who fired her into my worst memories and dreams.

Now I caress only the wall.
When I answer the phone, no one speaks --
Only distant sounds like interstellar clicks.

I do not recall what language I am.
Long ago I lost the ability
To associate faces and smells.

The boys at the bar give me drinks as I leave.
I go walking the alleys at night
And ransack garbage cans for keepsakes -- a bracelet,

A crowbar, a picture of a man watching the sky.
The brand of airplane I like was discontinued.
I walk into churches in the late afternoon

And linger to inhale the smoke of votive candles.
The boss props me against a wall
Until he needs me to make deliveries

Or sandblast another table and chairs.
There go the bells again, the crack in the hour
A cynical note, three in the morning already.

THE CREATURE IN REPOSE

Iron flecks like dying sparks
Stream in the window in the sun.
I think I know what it’s trying to say,
It’s fingers signaling sound:
I never was real. I worried well enough.
I touted well enough her time.

And where does that other linger now?
I’ve walked the traffic up and down,
And made my way along the middle of streets
I couldn’t cross, but like a cat
He disappeared around a corner
Somewhere and left my feet this worn-down tread

Craving its way against the pavement.
But here I have my empty windowpanes,
Companions in my escapade
To make the walls of all the world make sense.
I offer prayers to the city’s smoke
Turning red then going dark under stars.