The Houston Literary Review

The Houston Literary Review

Summer 2007 Poetry Issue I 

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We are proud to offer our readers the photographic and poetic artistry of Jeff Crouch and Chris Woods, Apryl Fox, Barry Harris, and Bryon Howell.

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Poetry of Apryl Fox  

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    Ode To Spring’s Lament

It is springtime; the sky is bluer
than the blue upon which
I see Heaven's clouds.

In the thaw of an old winter,
we weep words
no others can hear;
our hidden heartaches
steady.

There is always springtime
when darkness blooms, but I
call Ode to your sweet
lips, Ode to the crowd
of the unlamented eye,

Ode to bliss which
comes straight from Heaven.

Lilacs bloom on garden walls,
it is Springtime.
Listen to the birds
twitter at dusk.

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My Advice

The woman walks up and down
her secret garden holding a cup of tea
her last link to earth.

I ask what kind of tea she is drinking.
She says rosemary, or mint,
she has not taken a sip yet.
She is hurried, the day passing too fast.

I say I know what you mean; the years, they fly.
I cannot tell one day from the next,
or even one minute from another.
But you know, it ends soon
we ought to cherish it.

She smiles, and nods,
I sense she is not listening.
Her thoughts elsewhere
mailed to another zip code.

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A Song of Music

We weave chords of music
in our daily lives – a harp
a flute, a piano, drums.

My friend and I bound together
through my neighbor's classical music
each string, each chord a different tune.

We share a cup of green mint tea
as we sit on his patio listening
as our neighbor practices
before his midnight recital.

We'd love to be there an orchestra
of sounds but his show is sold out.
But it doesn't matter;
here, underneath the leaves
of a tall sycamore
we have front row seats.

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 The Poetry of Barry Harris 

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  A Bad Idea
 
It wasn’t a bad death.
It was merely a bad idea of death

not the real thing at all

just like you’re parading around in your pretend uniform.

One size doesn’t always fit all.

You were cut from a finer cloth

but you went away before it was tailored to you.

The flowers were perfunctory

and their pungent aromas stick

in my nostrils now and float like flotsam

into the bay of my consciousness.
It surprises me an olfactory déjà vu

from you who fell apart beyond my view.
It isn’t just that you are gone.

 

I could handle that if I could only put back the pieces of you

if I could understand it was your own death

a completion to the end of the fabric of your life
and not just another idea you had.

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Corpus Callosum

Maybe you should try,

you said,

living from another part of your brain.
it is not, i suppose,

as ifthe part I lately inhabit

has been all that successful:
the problem solver who doesn't solve,

the checklist checker become law-giver
drunk on responsibility.

too much straight line winei

s not good for the soul.
a soul needs circles

and waves

like mathematics

needs Mozart to see its song.

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 Half Mast

There is a house I pass
on my way to work
with a flagpole in the yard.

The man who owns this house

raises and lowers his flag at random

or so I thought.
These things should follow rules,not whims,

I think as each day I begin to see
his flag measures the country's blood pressure.

 

At first the flag stayed down long

after John Paul died,

long past the mourning period

decreed by presidential orderand even this at odds with precedence.

Then I began to noticethe standard lowered for a state trooper shot on the job,

subway bombs in London,

a suicide bomber at a wedding in Tel Aviv

or a hotel in Amman,

another dozen National Guard soldiers

dead patrolling Baghdad instead of rebuilding Biloxi.

 

On that December day

when Richard Pryor and Eugene McCarthy died
I wondered if the flag

found its way to half mast

because this great comedian died

and so there was less

laughter in the world

or if in honor of the mouse who roared

at LBJ and pried open the door

through which our soldiers at last marched home.

There is sorrow stained on this nation every day

and one man who oddly presumes which sorrow

is or is not worthy.
I am left to guess

at presumptions behind a flag
half mast more than not

and wonder when my neighbor's flag

will fly at length up high.

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The Poetry of Bryon Howell 

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