Blake Harrsch
Blake Harrsch is an English Literature Master’s Candidate and Writing Instructor at Seton Hall University. Her poetry has been published in New Jersey Bards Poetry Review, Sad Girl Diaries, Echo Review, and The Word’s Faire. When Blake isn’t writing at the duck pond, she can be found gallivanting through thrift store aisles.
The Great Flood (Poem)
When the world first flung
its treacherous tears from the sky,
I cried along with it. Pressing Mother
about my afternoon birthday party,
its certain cancellation shocked
the once fortunate summer-born babe.
My muddled mind waded through the un-swam pool
and unopened presents and uneaten cake until I reached
the unthinkable: Since when could a house be breached?
Our walls porous? The track of the basement
door an unreliable tower guard, snoozing,
or perhaps sneering, as the water welcomed
itself inside, dampening the pearl carpet until
the shade of its edges transformed to sand, a dismal shoreline.
Father flew to grab towels and sopped up
the soggy fibers, intermittently prodding the area,
as if checking a pulse. Mother guided me a room over,
knowing no solace but prayer. We climbed onto the Big Bed,
affectionately named in comparison to my single, and I wondered
if its squeaking springs would prove buoyant, the Queen mattress
an impending lifeboat. Our Father, she prompted, as mine defied
the numinous fog, still peering through the pictureless window
of the glass slider to offer some forecast our powerless television
could not provide, deciding he had “never seen it come down this much.”
Thy Kingdom come; Thy will be done.
Blubbering racked my feeble frame, induced
by the horror of our house washing away, and I drowned
in the pitter patter of rain, pitter patter pitter patter
of Mother’s heartbeat, her strong hand urging my cheek
against her bosom to shield me from the coruscating glow
of her eyes that flashed with each lightning strike, beamed
with each wail that escaped me / Forgive us our trespasses /
grateful to cradle her ever-growing child. Her arms were no levee
against the rushing worry, but belonged to a gardener determined
to redirect a plant that has vined and stretched to find its own sun
back into its pot.
Nor did she conjure the adage that quelled crib fits
just years before—God is bowling!—but let me cry
and cry and cry until I was reduced to sobs and snot. As if God
had come again, ready to select two of every species once more,
and how well I pleaded determined if my family would be spared.
Deliver us from evil. Amen. Please. Please.
Like the Irish (Poem)
He won’t tell you he’s leaving
but there will be signs—
ones you can’t decode, though flashing, perhaps neon,
until memories are all the belongings you have left
to sift through, when all the time you’ll have
is all the time you’ve had. Recall his yawn
at the Italian restaurant, covered by his familiar hand,
when you were distracted by those boisterous veins
(How are we so in love as to rate appendages?).
In this foolishness—no, you’re not the fool for trusting—
in this vulnerability, lending your heart for his holding,
you couldn’t have known he would shove it
in the clutter of his denim pocket with crumpled
receipts, straw wrappers, and a sticky nickel.
How clearly un-wallet worthy he deems you, denied
preservation in that laminated flap—a man’s hall of fame.
You realize he was bored.
You are not boring. Ears are unreliable, and forget
those damned eyes and their wanderings. Yes, blame
his eyes for not liking what they see! Indulge
in this game of hide-and-seek, the players
every person you’ve ever been, buried within you,
demanding to be heard. When you decide he detests
your body, you’ll find her: the twelve-year-old girl
cowering behind a stack of boxes and diffidence.
But he never says that, of course. He blames his heart,
that it just wasn’t in it, as if the organ can move
from its fused ligaments without the handicraft
of a surgeon’s knife, as if he misplaced it or it packed a bag
and ran away in the middle of the night, pissed at its parents.
And you will become an author,
determined to dissect his real reasons—
your eternally chipped nail polish, the grown-out
face frame, how laughter doubles your chin—
Commencement (Poem)
Erica, my therapist, asks,
When you say you feel shame,
where do you sense that in the body?
And my lungs balloon with a selfish inhale
to sustain the evaluation, the thorough scan
an undoing of a bird’s nest:
examine the roots of the architecture
unwind unfavorable materials; pluck out parasites
salvage the good and weave again, thread by thread,
with hope in the loom
My rounded shoulders are a surprise
discovery—this cowering toward the middle
of myself, fragments traceable to the point
of impact, a leaf curling inward from changing winds
before the storm—while outside my bedroom window
a bird begins to twitter.
Chickadee.
The name arrives certain, assured, a repetitive trill
I recognize without seeing the feathered source.
I am not a bird watcher, as much of a disgrace
to my deities of Dillard and Oliver that may make me,
but it soars through the sill—the tune from early years.
Young enough for space in the toe of my shoe,
pink tights slippery against the plastic chairs
arranged for preschool graduation, mother-crafted
braids rest atop my proud shoulders. We sing.
My hands cup the stuffed bird gifted by Miss Maria
to mark our membership in the Chickadee Class
before we migrate to warmer regions, a souvenir for the flyway.
Its lyrics now escape me, the melodious
ribbon unwound by the pulling hands
of time, but I remember how I relished
finding the button buried in its fuzzy belly,
sounding chirps on cue when our teacher
prompted. When its three calls concluded,
and I, too, warbled, articulate and reverberant,
When I would have braved any climate, risen
before any sunrise to wake the world
with my song, trusting my calls
would be returned by the flock.
Now, in the after
of what Erica asks I do not describe,
just feel, I interrogate why soaring
no longer feels instinctual, why I believed
in his right to cast the net and capture me,
keeping me from my banditry, and,
when there were no more birds to cast off,
why I let him pluck each feather, exposing
the pink of my skin to the burning star
of conceit. Why I did not try to fly away.
The Chickadee chatters once more.
Here, I respond, fingertips gently
tapping the center of myself.
I feel it in my throat.