Harrison Hamm

Weeds

I let the weeds grow
so I don’t have to keep mowing them down.

Better to let night do its night work.

Already asleep with the lights on:
this college kid with books on his bed.

He’s breathing through a nose strip.
He’s dreaming up a cobblestone well.

And he’s falling down that cobblestone well.

This is what frightens me:
how much nothing there is to know about.

Our window aglow
with 3am, without stars,
but we know they’re there –
behind the curtain of city lights.

Let it be a blessing.

The lover like a bird
painted on my shoulder.

Out there is a version
where I never believed in powers.

No sea mist or jade green.

Out there, I’m used to the ritual
of lost antlers.

This clover grass-whistle
of later darkness – almost a song.

I try not to slip in my own words,
but I’m no good with cages.

He’s drifting onto blacker glass.
He’s walking into the video meadow.

And he’s starring in that video meadow.

Jacaranda leaves, electric,
as now they blow.

I know their neon.
I know some things about purple.

And green in the jade eyes.

I know he’s looking for me out there
on the wrong shore, so I leave him

bruised sky with sea mist.
Stars: an invasive species of satellites.

Grown by the back hand of God.

And aren’t we half stardust or something?
And does that mean we’re the weeds?

Author Reading

About the Author

Harrison Hamm is a poet, screenwriter, and essayist originally from rural Tennessee, now based in Los Angeles. A 2023 Filmmaker’s Workshop Fellow with New York Stage and Film and a 2022 Fellow in Diverso’s The Minority Report, his writing can be found at harrisonhamm.com and is published or forthcoming in About Place Journal, Bicoastal Review, Broken Antler, Fatal Flaw Literary, and more.