It is pouring somewhere in the universe

by Matthew Bruce Harrison 

and there is a reason

why wine is used

for communion. You kill

the bottle to fall

away like a New Year

cork that dissolves

in garden mint. Or body

emptied so transported

to a dark landfill outside

the city they say never

sleeps, lying

in cool soil, in shards

of moon and plastic

parts with everybody

else’s unexceptional

dreams of a cathedral

arch lighting

the critically acclaimed

last show of the final

season, of a star

worthy of all stars

and the quiet river

stirring constellations

or bodies in hot beds

who drink the sweat

of the city evaporated

into breath, who hear

the ovation and fizzle

off to sleep hoping

it is nothing, it is only

the long hoped for

rainstorm with an extra-

terrestrial name.

Matthew Bruce Harrison’s writing can be found in West Branch, Yemassee, Carolina Quarterly, Texas Review, Adroit Journal, Cincinnati Review, Bayou, Gargoyle and Permafrost, among others. His poetry has been nominated for a Pushcart and for the Best of the Net Anthology, and his fiction has been nominated for the storySouth Million Writers Award and was a finalist for the Mid-American Review Sherwood Anderson Fiction Prize. Originally from Georgia, he now lives and teaches in Minnesota. Read his previous poem in Deep South here.