Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, SUITE TO APPLENESS: 1, by JAMES HARRISON


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

SUITE TO APPLENESS: 1, by                 Poet Analysis     Poet's Biography
First Line: If you love me drink this discolored wine
Last Line: Her mountains strewn and crushed.
Alternate Author Name(s): Harrison, Jim
Subject(s): Apples; Christianity; Drinks & Drinking; Fruit; Judgments; Temptation; Wine


If you love me drink this discolored wine,
tanning at the edge with the sourness of flowers -
their heads, soldiers', floating as flowers,
heads, necks, owned by gravity now as war
owned them and made them move to law;
and the water is heavier than war, the heads
bobbing freely there with each new wave lap.

̺ ̺ ̺

And if your arm offends you, cut it off.
Then the leg by walking, tear out the eye,
the trunk, body be eyeless, armless, bodiless.
And if your brain offends you...
If Christ offends you, tear him out,
or if the earth offends you, skin her
back in rolls, nailed to dry
on barnside, an animal skin in sunlight;
or the earth that girl's head,
throwing herself from the asylum roof,
head and earth whirling earthward.

̺ ̺ ̺

Or if we reoccur with death our humus, heat,
as growths or even mushrooms; on my belly
I sight for them at dead-leaf line -
no better way - thinking there that I hear
the incredible itch of things to grow,
Spring, soon to be billion-jetted.

̺ ̺ ̺

Earth in the boy's hand, the girl's head,
standing against the granary; earth a green
apple he picked to throw at starlings,
plucked from among green underleaves,
silver leaf bellies burred with fine white hairs;
the apple hurled, hurtling greenly with wet solidity,
earth spinning in upon herself,
shedding her brains and whales and oceans,
her mountains strewn and crushed.





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