Current
Issue
Fall 2026 / Volume 13.1
Jerry Harp
—
Cultivations in Clay
The entire garden space—tenebrous, mottled,
overgrown with peppers, tomatoes, jimson
weed, and eggplants—ramrods my soul with such
unadorned and savage beauty, it amounts
to an unmastered cruelty lashing me to
its mast while lethal blossoms sing.
Bees drifting flower to flower emblematize
a civilization gone sour, so worn and wrecked,
even the wealthiest are on the skids,
and the cultivated wallow in conspiracy.
Lavender has been lavender so long,
its survival fitness forces its opponents
back to the root; and roses are so roses—
damask, gallica, sweet-brier—they range,
ravish, and ravage. Snakes avoid them.
Rosemary chants death taking dominion.
Jerry Harp's books include Creature (2003), Gatherings (2004), and Spirit Under Construction (2017). His poems have appeared, among other places, in Best American Poetry ( 2009), Boulevard, The Christian Century, Commonweal, The Iowa Review, Kenyon Review, Nimrod International, and Pleiades. He teaches at Lewis & Clark College.
