Please note: Poetry is compressed to fit smart phone screens. If you are reading this poem on a phone screen, please turn your screen sideways to make sure that you are seeing correct line breaks for the poem.
Flight Path, St. Louis
Stressed skin—we were in descent—
there is only guessing westward
until the islands, the confluence,
the slant waters begin to tell true.
We have known Missouri by the props
and seams: levees, bottoms,
struts and stays of the highways
in crossing, headstones of Calvary
and Bellefontaine growing
on approach. We are knowing ourselves
as the great arch sways, close
quarters and wind-swung, teasing
expansive glances through small
frames—catenary upended, still
and ever bearing fantastic weight
in the base sectors. We course down
into Missouri, heavy in the current
that holds, resists our passage—
a landing just downstream from the last
great union until Cairo, Defiance,
all things between us arch
and flatter, a hyperbolic function.
Hudson Yards
Clear and Roman
the tug mid-river,
anchored with its cargo,
awaiting this day
its orders, its holdings low.
And the day arrives
in mute pangs of fire,
exacting dawn distending
between the ribs of the city
against the far shore—
the glass, the gathering flow,
the sun-drowsy vessels
clear for passage, holding
bleached economies
in freighted light.
Ryan Harper is an Assistant Professor of the Practice at Fairfield University-Bellarmine in Bridgeport, Connecticut. He is the author of My Beloved Had a Vineyard (Poetry Press of Press Americana, 2018). Ryan is the creative arts editor of American Religion Journal and lives in Bridgeport, Connecticut.
THE CITY KEY 