Do this he says or try and I try and I say white pine
say lilac and snow at dawn say a litany of milkweed
fescue and cinnamon fern I say this city is killing me
is actually killing me so I wake in the never-dark
afraid of my own heart which keeps skirling up
into storm insistent on its strange ache and patter
keeps buffeting against the sheets the chairs beating
its wings over these domestic plates ceramic born
of dirt and fire impervious to both salt and weight
I carry this heart clattering now like a jar full of pebbles
full also of furious wind I carry it like a half-tame bat
all echolocation careen and squeal I carry it like a song
threnody of fear and desire the way it knocks insistent
at the door then lets no one in
Leslie Harrison’s second book, The Book of Endings (University of Akron), was a finalist for the National Book Award. Recent poems have appeared or are forthcoming in The Kenyon Review, The New Republic, West Branch and elsewhere. She lives in Baltimore and teaches at Towson University.