Eratio


 

 

 

Three Poems

 

Mark Harris

 

 

 

 

Tract

 

      (after Ad Reinhardt)

 

 

i.

 

No line no

form no shape

no thing no

 

picturing –

black is light

leached free of

 

pain is not

pleasure is

not essence

 

 

 

ii.

 

No, not in

one that can

be named or

 

known – a dis-

solution

as if love

 

had always

been there, square

unspoken

 

 

 

iii.

 

Center it

at the end

of the white

 

gallery –

take your time

don’t say a-

 

symmetry

or the hand,

hang it plumb

 

 

 

iv.

 

Desire nor

desire nor

ache depict

 

pigment un-

bound, black ex-

egesis

 

the last brush-

mark made in-

visible

 

 

 

v.

 

“Out of sight

in his blacks,”

the Father

 

wrote, knowing

black is not

negation

 

and nothing

is greater

than zero

 

 

 

vi.

 

Every

direction

division

 

more & more

becoming

not, nameless

 

the last word

will always

come to naught

 

 

 

 

Lake

 

Before and after

wave

 

water-thought

fract

 

the light changes

 

to construct

what we need

what is

 

silt un-

to sun, sediment

 

mud/cloud

 

the seam dividing

 

hemlock

 

shade,

the far shore

 

 

 

Else

 

The folds of the earth

worn down

 

languid

a web of lines

 

gray sky resists

being fixed in time

 

 

subjects

for what else they are

 

the red we remember

of flesh in the dark

 

catalog of everything

possession

 

 

mind exists

only in fragments

 

in reflection

the circle at the center

 

immaterial

constructs a world

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Mark Harris lives in Princeton, New Jersey.  His poems have appeared in Shearsman, NOON: journal of the short poem, ONandOnScreen, The Elephants and other publications.  He is editor/publisher at Ornithopter Press

 

 


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