Poetry by Alison Harville

How Melancholy Is Going


Wind pulls snow across the road
in vaporous streams, like ghosts
fleeing the broken dawn.

I used to run away a lot,
but ill equipped never made it far.

The exposed sun is gaudily bright,
glinting on the sharp dressed ground,
and the frighteningly cold bay water
squirms like a virus.

As usual, I seek the anonymous
shadows beneath the old trees,
that space in which I can
spill and spread my cracked treasures,
bits of bone and nursery rhymes.

What I’m not allowed to take
I don’t,

but the rest is polished to bruising.




Slip Away


Smooth new skin
under a white night dress,
a bright morning to follow.

I had twelve dreams
and that was the last.

In this night theater
memories scurry like mice,
trip piano wires
and search the floor for scraps.

I lay with my scars
in air left cold by rain
seeping through a cracked window.

I ask the night to tell me
what I didn't know,
and it answers on the darkening screen
this is when I let you go.

​

Bio: Alison Harville's poems have appeared in Tower Journal, The Café Review and the anthology Under the Legislator of Stars. She is a resident of the Seacoast area of New Hampshire and a member of City Hall Poets.  She can be found online at @RubyAli_GMW.

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