|
|
|
Classic and Contemporary Poetry
GEO-BESTIARY: 28, by JAMES HARRISON Poet Analysis Poet's Biography
First Line: The wallet is as big as earth
Last Line: Tethered to these shadows dragging toward night.
Alternate Author Name(s): Harrison, Jim
Subject(s): Despair; Money
First Line: The wallet is as big as earth
Last Line: Tethered to these shadows dragging toward night.
Alternate Author Name(s): Harrison, Jim
Subject(s): Despair; Money
The wallet is as big as earth
and we snuffle, snorkel, lip lap
at money's rankest genitals,
buried there as money gophers, money worms,
hibernate our lives away with heads
well up money's asshole, eating, drinking,
sleeping there in money's shitty dark.
That's money, folks, the perverse love
thereof, as if we swam carrying an anchor
or the blinders my grandpa's horses wore
so that while ploughing they wouldn't notice
anything but the furrow ahead, not certainly
the infinitely circular horizon of earth.
Not the money for food and bed but the endless
brown beyond that. I'm even saving
up for my past, by god, healing the twelve-hour
days in the fields or laying actual concrete blocks.
The present passes too quickly to notice
and I've never had a grip on the future,
even as an idea. As a Pleistocene dunce
I want my wife and children to be safe
in the past, and then I'll look up from my money-fucking
grubbing work to watch the evening
shadows fleeing across the green field next door,
tethered to these shadows dragging toward night.
Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!
Other Poems of Interest...
THE TRAVELLER by RANDALL JARRELL
ART VS. TRADE by JAMES WELDON JOHNSON
THE IDEA OF BALANCE IS TO BE FOUND IN HERONS AND LOONS by JAMES HARRISON