Will Harris
About the Writer
Originally from San Antonio, Texas, Will Harris was born into a military family. After serving two military staff tours in the Middle East, he left the military but returned to live and teach English in the United Arab Emirates for over a decade. He recently attended the Colrain Poetry Manuscript Conference.
Will’s writing is forthcoming or has been published in African American Review, Burningwood, Cold Mountain Review, decomP, Eleventh Muse, Existere, Mantis, MELUS, Reunion: The Dallas Review, The Round, Storyscape, Wascana Review, Word Riot, and The Zora Neale Hurston Forum, among others.
IMAM ALI SHRINE
joe admits he cannot see much
beyond the aching beauty
of its lapis and turquoise walls,
and the ancient marble floors
so smoothed by the feet of pilgrims
they see their faces reflected there.
When they hose the blood and sand away,
a glory still shines forth like the midday.
What joe can understand
is the old man shuffling as fast as his age
to the mosque wall, to touch the sacred
with hands and forehead, weeping.
His tears could be anyone’s—the Jewish elder
returning to the Wailing Wall,
joe’s father returning to the owned graves
the Georgia farmer permits his family to visit.
KANGAROO WALL
There was just enough room
between the single cinder block
outer wall and the single cinder
block wall of his villa for joe to
extend one arm and fold the
other at the elbow.
He remembered how, at Khobar,
there was a single line of waist-
high concrete barriers, a
high chain-link fence (they
hung netting from it and
practiced golf shots), and
about 15 feet of grass-
mottled yard between fence
and building. A succession of
commanders, and soldiers
who honed their swings.
For the first two weeks he
sleeps in the living room,
behind two additional walls,
with the couch cushions laid
on the floor and the
base flipped over in a
body-long inverted V. That
approach lasts a few nights.
Then it’s sleeping on the
couch a week or so. Next,
long tossing nights with the
outer room lights turned off,
heavy trucks passing or stopping
for long periods each night.
One night he finally lets go,
dreams of the Air Force Academy
blue course, mule deer mingling into
the background of evergreens, and
elk stepping forth in full-antlered
majesty. When he wakes the
next day, he lies a bit
longer in his bed against
the outer wall, promises himself he’ll
buy a Kangaroo golf cart
when he gets back,
you know, the kind that
you can put on autopilot
while you paint the sunset
of the eighth hole, the
mountains and kaleidoscope of
fading grays in your mind.
Three months later, Command gives
him his first chance to
leave the outer wall. He turns
them down for several months,
until he is finally ordered
to a new compound,
off the wall.
Contents
Poetry
-- Ambassador To A Distant Kingdom In The North County
-- Memory Consumed So It Was Never
-- To My Brother's Late Dragon Lady
-- House Stuff
-- My Underwear Drawer Houses the Book of Mormon
-- sunday mornings, after Afghanistan
Prose
-- Heat Dream
-- Mayonaise
-- Orlando Two Point O: Hashtag Forever Yung
Artwork and Photography
-- The New World Manbike 12 x 9 2016
-- The New World Workers 2 Ink 15 x 11 2016
-- Mistry Trees
-- Let it Begin
-- Untitled-Gouache, Graphite, Ink and Watercolour on Laid-Textured Paper
-- Nope-Gouache, Graphite, Ink and Watercolour on Found Paper
-- Horrible Together, Full Circle-Ink on Cardboard Paper
Reviews
Margaret Crawford
-- A Review of Kathleen McCraken's Double Self-Portrait with Mirror: New and Selected Poems (1978-2014)
-- A Review of R. Aviars Utskins' The Hoosier Zebra and other "Poims"