Skyboxes and sugarhouses

Matthea Harvey's Photographs. More here on her site: http://www.mattheaharvey.info/projects/

From “Ceiling Unlimited Series”

(ceiling unlimited)
God of seedpods, we are wallowing in it. The hay has been gathered into gold rolls in the field. Why the calves in concentric circles? Why every other picket in the fence pulled out to be sold at the store? Yes the papery poppies are a bit like the dry side of a foot & hence the unnecessary massacre, but that’s no reason to condemn the pelicans or throw out the wedding cakes when they turn grey. You said when a semi spills its cargo of oranges the driver has a choice: flamingo on the salt flats or canary in the mines. I want the former. I’ve waited years for the xerox flash& still no inkling. Lately I’ve been thinking you love the groves & don’t know how to tell us. I think you made the steps slick for a reason.

(almost anything)
Dear dust-ghost, the instructions don’t make sense unless I sing them. If the bottom-most hem is six feet from the ground, how do I get into this dress? Bird ode: Dark triangle feet in a wind-field.Fifth museum poem: O swim on through. Handsome & Then Some: Hello. Please help. Or if pretending isn’t the way, tell me that the pony’s bones are still too soft to hold meup & take away my paper lantern. Like most cadenzas I need something to come back to. I push the rubble out of the second-storey window. I put the money in an envelope & it’s sucked up a transparent tube. Only the rusted bits of roof stand out against the sky. Yellow water in the gutters—always the fault falls somewhere.

(silver print)
The lock sticks again. I can make a self-portrait out of anything. My silhouette in the window is all elbows. Blossom to stem — the rust roses on the pipes are blooming backwards. The head pushes its way out, learns how to waver later. Upside-downin the spoon, I think I am getting closer —second-hand skimming time, blue windowseverywhere, sharp smell of keys in the air. Where are you inevitable slap? I have propped the storm windows against the side of the housefor you: twenty paintings of the sky & five grillsheaped with charcoal so the air above them shimmers, shatters. Tell me I’m not just forging a copy, tell me you’re more than the moon.

Poem by Matthea Harvey. Originally published in “Pity the Bathtub Its Forced Embrace of the Human Form.”