No Dante But Maybe Guided
Matthew Bruce Harrison
All my holes raw before the cathedral
vault of the Gothic food court, I cut
a sickle path through the dead
lawn and slid behind a purple mass
of puffers and pom-pommed beanies
bowed in the shared breath of winter
prayer beside Summit Avenue, under
a fossilized white walnut. South, traffic
lights greened and bloodied banks
of snow where I turned perpendicular
to the congregation, free not to glance
back but did and did witness the down-
cast glittered heads no longer holy
supplicants but lapping at the glows
of palmed phones. Bluish static flurried
the scene. Was a funny disappointment
for unanointed me when the shuttle came
trumpeting bad brakes in royal advent
for the waiting. Everybody looked up,
but I legged the freeze to Sri Chinmoy
Peace Bridge, arched the clouded Mississippi
that copied the slow clouds. My idiot faith
romanced a leap, but my body, middling
on a road inclined to weather us across
despite the weight of our exhaust held me
level, though I slipped into commonplace
reverie for the middle ages, my cinematic
Book of Hours. Elevated, framed by sky-
scrapers and abandoned barbicans, my movie
illuminated those students bound in sacred-
heart dyed merchandise who waited still,
transmogrified into the hum and steam
of a violet idea beneath the nimbus-bright
bulbs of the number sixty until each drop,
when each body descended, trustful, a live-
streamed angel tracing the brief boot prints
of strangers in the miniature buoyant gleams
of miracle texts on touched screens, diminishing
into the cassock of Saint Paul. I crossed over
heel-to-toe just as the locals taught so not
to fall. I blew into my cupped palms, flattened
them, rubbed warm my Gospel name, Matthew,
unfolded my hands and thought, Matthew, when
your destination finds you, thank the time-
grimed windows there, the worn door, the labored
calm, the scarred floor, the leftovers, the soured
sheets, the hopeless hours, the hopeful, the close
enduring skin, the wait, the descent, the stop.
about the writer
Matthew Bruce Harrison's writing can be found in Sixth Finch, West Branch, Adroit Journal, Carolina Quarterly, Texas Review, Bayou, Cincinnati Review, and At Length , among others. Born in Georgia, he lived in Washington and California for a long while before moving to Massachusetts to do an MFA at UMass-Amherst. Now he lives in Minnesota, where he makes do.