Kim Harvey

Ars Poetica: What I Discovered in the Pandemic

“Thirsty people will find shiny things beautiful,”
Something Jane Hirshfield said on Science Friday. Poets
are magpies collecting images, scraps of words, a turn

of phrase overheard then tucked away for future use.
Random facts, like the first woman to cycle around the world
learned to ride a bike just hours before she set off.

Vervet monkeys make different sounds to warn of leopards,
eagles & snakes. One shriek sends the other monkeys scurrying,
another has them gazing skyward or down at their feet.

A title I keep in my back pocket: Now a Low-Grade Fever.
Something Heather said in Napa when we were delirious
from so little sleep, so much poetry & wine. “You are the power.”

Another line that hasn’t found its time. What I’ve seen
on my way to work: pink poster about a missing puppy,
text alert—missing senior, someone’s sofa on the curb.

I once had a sofa like that, the first one I bought as an adult.
Trump Sucks, carved into the sidewalk. Did you know
a jellyfish has no brain & a cuttlefish has three hearts?

I learned that while riding BART, something I never thought I’d miss.
    Bowie said artists were the original false gods. Remember
this: dogs need amino acids like taurine, cysteine & methionine.

You never know when you’ll want to use that in a line.
     The things I carried through the pandemic.
Or the things that carried me. Maybe all poems are questions.

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Kim Harvey is a queer SF Bay Area poet and an Associate Editor at Palette Poetry. Her poems have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net awards. You can find her work in Barren Magazine, Black Bough Poetry, Kissing Dynamite, Poets Reading the News, Radar, Rattle, SWWIM, trampset and elsewhere. She is the 1st Prize winner of the Comstock Review’s 2019 Muriel Craft Bailey Memorial Award and the 3rd Prize winner of the 2019 Barren Press Poetry Contest. She has two microchaps forthcoming this summer from Kissing Dynamite Press and Ghost City Press. Follow her on Twitter: @kimharveypoet & Instagram: @luna_jack. Web: www.kimharvey.net.