The 2River View 25.4 (Summer 2021)
 

Will Harmon

Bubble Bath

water rushes hard over his sharp-rock feet, then
is lit up: bright, flash to complete toast, butter,
cinnamon, domino sugar, domino mother, standing
high, while you skitter lines on the dining table with a silver fork,
life swaddled by big blankets of ooze, crude
oil burning love letters into the pork belly –
he shakes off his bones and dives into the sea.
and all those people rush down, red and pink and her
hair all ugly, shouting, come back up, it’s electric,
licking his little feet, she’s making it all plastic and
eyeballs rattle around in his head, yelping and crying and
she sighs, she runs up to him, yes the sea washes up to him,
on to him, years of pummeling waves, ripping you
down into salt, and back into the sun.
   

Mallory

the sun will always be hundreds of years in the sky
in the summer day when we were born, in that
pool-table filled bar, our mothers screaming and all
holding hands, because they knew we would be

ephemeral, like the flames of the torches
that burn while we dance, splashing
beer in each other’s brightly-lit faces,
and understanding nothing about our flailing bodies,

but one day the world will turn,
and the bitter factories of our lives will belch their smoke,
and the clouds will yet again cover the sky,
and we may touch the cold ground
and cry, and the sun
will be low, and it will be winter again.
  

Will Harmon is a poet, philosopher, mountaineer, and undergraduate student at New York University. His work here in 2RV is his first publication.

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