Long Rafted Poems

curt hissy Matthew Scott Harris
who wishes ewe well
to make $cents of the following
mumbo jumbo lettered gumbo.

Hip puck crease see
(ad hoc) key hide dee claim
haint how my noggin 
comports itself to take aim,
cuz ear lee aire...

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The ones who would soak 
the mother who drowned 
her children in serpentine
seas never floated a child. 

When splashed amongst 
the horror-stricken, 
we too feign revulsion. 
Evoke higher powers and
baptismal pools: the fluidity
in the womb....

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When did you enter into my life? 
Was it when the crying baby in the cradle received a warm hug from her mother? 
or was it when the children cheerfully ran home after the school's...

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Hello young man! I surely have heard a lot about you.
I drove here as soon as I heard the news,
And I’ve something to say if you can excuse.
 
God gave a bird in my nest,...

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The Sittee River


Tumbling down from the magnificent Maya Mountains,
The rabid Sittee River rushed headlong, 
Over-flooding its banks and the giant mangroves
On its long journey to the open Caribbean Sea.
Once forest green, the River’s color was...

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The fleeting dawn has translucent crystal light
that shimmers and wrinkles my furrowed slack skin. 
Then a temperate touch, my terrors ignite
as beneath my waves, dark currents surge within;
since time began, I have carried human kind;
but...

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I walked along the Mississippi shoreline at midnight
Listening to distant barges groaning in the dark
And thinking about Mark Twain
Drifting down the river on a lazy summer day.

It's the same old Mississippi he rafted on,
The same...

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