2 Poems by K.D. Harryman

Archetype

Sometimes, Father is just a man

spinning out of Grandmother’s drive; his car,

a black dog, chrome teeth spitting gravel 

on gifts left in porch light. 

Sometimes, he’s a soldier gone AWOL, 

hiding in the attic when MPs come. 

Or, he’s nowhere for days, 

before he comes back

(calling again and again

the name he gave you)

wide-eyed, bloodstained, 

banging the screen door. 

Grief During Drought

Beyond the crisping meadow 

where my daughters snagged 

kite strings in a stand of dirty pines 

and pepper trees––the heat-parched basin 

of a reservoir, empty. Grebes that swam there, 

displaced along with heron, grouse. 

Once, that summer Judy died, when ash 

dusted every hood and yellowed the sky,

I came upon coyotes scuffling 

beside a mailbox, tugging back and forth 

some soft, limp prize, and remembered 

the girl on her porch at dusk––

the body calling out for what 

it once had and thought it deserved. 

K. D. Harryman is the author of Girls’ Book of Knots, forthcoming (BlazeVox[books], 2023). Her work has appeared in The Academy of American Poets Poem-A-Day Series, Narrative, Cream City Review, The Greensboro Review, and Raleigh Review among others. She is the recipient of the 2019 Rumi Prize sponsored by Arts & Letters and the 2018 James Hearst Poetry Prize sponsored by North American Review. Her first book, Auto Mechanic’s Daughter, was selected by Chris Abani for the Black Goat Poetry Series Imprint at Akashic Books in Brooklyn. She lives with her family in Los Angeles and serves at Poetry Editor for Five South.

20 February 2023