Three Poems
Mark Harris
Tract
(after Ad Reinhardt)
i.
No line no
form no shape
no thing no
picturing –
black is light
leached free of
pain is not
pleasure is
not essence
ii.
No, not in
one that can
be named or
known – a dis-
solution
as if love
had always
been there, square
unspoken
iii.
Center it
at the end
of the white
gallery –
take your time
don’t say a-
symmetry
or the hand,
hang it plumb
iv.
Desire nor
desire nor
ache depict
pigment un-
bound, black ex-
egesis
the last brush-
mark made in-
visible
v.
“Out of sight
in his blacks,”
the Father
wrote, knowing
black is not
negation
and nothing
is greater
than zero
vi.
Every
direction
division
more & more
becoming
not, nameless
the last word
will always
come to naught
Lake
Before and after
wave
water-thought
fract
the light changes
to construct
what we need
what is
silt un-
to sun, sediment
mud/cloud
the seam dividing
hemlock
shade,
the far shore
Else
The folds of the earth
worn down
languid
a web of lines
gray sky resists
being fixed in time
subjects
for what else they are
the red we remember
of flesh in the dark
catalog of everything
possession
mind exists
only in fragments
in reflection
the circle at the center
immaterial
constructs a world
Mark Harris lives in Princeton, New Jersey. His poems have appeared in Shearsman, NOON: journal of the short poem, ONandOnScreen, The Elephants and other publications. He is editor/publisher at Ornithopter Press.
