Myronn Hardy
Failure
Leaves burn above our heads
yet our hair remains unsinged black
as jackdaw.
This crispness this air more
like quince. I have failed miserably.
I have failed you in this
season of colorful death.
How it falls in streets
pounded smooth.
In piles where I played as a boy.
Auburn joy now more like
the burning of skin.
Who could have known me this way?
This failed man wandering after
the act after the explosion.
The parachute wide as wilderness dragging.
This wilderness where
I reach for you.
Myronn Hardy is the author of four books of poems: Approaching the Center, winner of the PEN/Oakland Josephine Miles Prize; The Headless Saints, winner of the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award; Catastrophic Bliss, winner of the Griot–Stadler Award for Poetry; and, most recently, Kingdom. He divides his time between Morocco and New York City.
More from Vol. 34, Issue 2
The Greener We
Heikki Huotari
In Swatchel-Cove
Matthew Moore
The Return from Calvary // Cut and Dried
Mary Ann Samyn
Manifold Evocations IV & XI
Terrell Jamal Terry
[ideo–] // [syn–] from PRE–
Barbara Tomash
from The Lapidary's Nosegay
Lara Candland
Recuperating the Brilliant Picture: Language as Transubstantiation in Revell's Later Poems
Kathryn Cowles
Love Fool
Christopher DeWeese
Creatures No. 3 // Shift in the Ground
David Felix
Failure
Myronn Hardy