HARRIS COVERLEY - POEMS

Harris Coverley is a Rhysling-nominated poet and member of the Weird Poets Society, with verse most recently accepted for Spectral Realms, Corvus Review, Artifact Nouveau, Ariel Chart, and View From Atlantis, amongst others. He lives in Manchester, England.

​Personforms
​

​I was leaving the shop
and the guy with the two wheel trolley
who opened the door,
which I snuck through,
wore a big beanie and blue overalls,
was wordless and hairy,
and had eyes as wide and
as wild as the forgotten glaciers
on the Moon.
 
I thanked him briefly,
and got the hell out.

Accented
​

​she was Irish
Irish like the winds above Omagh
 
that float across the sea
to me
 
winds like a voice
her voice
 
like a drip of wine
 
fermented
and squeezed
from grapes
grown in a greenhouse in Co Tyrone
 

Melancholia
​

​I keep my old pain
in a cupboard at
the back of
my mind.
 
I take it out on
occasion. Dust it.
Fiddle with it. Hold
it close to me, shut
my eyes, and try to
sense the
details of
its contours,
its lines,
its grooves,
its cracks,
the patches where
it has been worn
smooth.
 
It is a good pain.
Sturdy and
unforgiving.
Gracious
and quiet.
Worthy of a
song.

The Glass Fortress
​

​Every month or so
Some bastards would smash
The bus stop outside school to bits
And we’d all have no choice
But to walk through those
Fields of glass across the pavement
 
The chunks of glass were like glacial mints
And tinked around your feet like coins
As you strode through them
 
And I pretended to be Stormfor, Master-Warrior
Smasher of the Glass Fortress
Liberator of Planet Y-Z
 
Or I was the world’s most flamboyant billionaire
Touring the diamond patch
Within my vast safe of countless riches
And soon I would have acquired enough diamonds
To swim through them like water
 
Like that child I still wait
For glory
Or for riches
And that bus stop
Has not been smashed
For many years now

Mysterious Ways
​

​‘twas blind faith
‘cause they pricked out
their own eyes
with toothpicks
and their god ate them