Moving from Ivory to Lava to Dial
The bar of soap was cracked and my mind came out.
It was small but attractive, my mind,
much smaller than I expected.
The soap was called Dove,
and my mind Paloma
was at peace.
It was called Irish Spring,
and it sprang from my hand
like a leprechaun.
I called it Ivory,
and a netsuke elephant
decried poaching on the savanna.
I called out Lava, and my mind
flowed down from the dome,
killing twenty tourists.
The soap was called Dial, part of a rotary phone,
and I dialed the past, nearly penitent,
ready to make amends
for some things that I did,
but I got it backwards and I got Laid.
The past was so good that way: clean mind, clean body.
.
Harrison Fisher was awarded an NEA fellowship in poetry in 1978. Since 1977, he has published twelve collections of poetry, four of them book-length: Blank Like Me, Curtains for You, UHFO, and Poematics of the Hyperbloody Real. In 2024, Fisher has new work appearing in BlazeVOX, Book XI, Clade Song, dadakuku, MIDLVLMAG, Misfitmagazine, Rundelania, and Transom.
Stone Poetry Quarterly 