Jack D. Harvey

Jack D. Harvey’s poetry has appeared in Scrivener, The Comstock Review, The Write Launch, Typishly Literary Magazine, The Antioch Review, The Piedmont Poetry Journal and elsewhere. The author has been a Pushcart nominee and over the years has been published in a few anthologies. The author has been writing poetry since he was sixteen and lives in a small town near Albany, New York.

“The Perspective of Venice” and “The Dogmeat General”

And in Venice, spring!
priest manqué
Baron Corvo’s pimping presence
passes by,
on the lookout for the right boys.
Oh che bel divertimento!

“No Tree,” “Saint Valentine,” and “Dead Heisenberg”

“No tree grows all the way to heaven,”
a darling end to a bible story
or Lenten play beginning
you might say;
a betrayal of trust

“Good Old Dad,” “Nuns Fret Not,” and “That’s All Folks”

Had enough of it,
pushing along with
his job and family
and gave up.

Game over.

Good old dad,
always liked trains
and that’s where he went.

“The Long March,” “Sunday Sunday,” and “Marie”

Bound on some skillful retreat,
a long march
north and west;
cut off from the rest
we end up foraging
in some scanty orchard,
the two of us.

“A Kiss on the Lips,” “The Wolf on the Fold” and “Make Eve the Apple”

A kiss on the lips,
my lover,
is all I wanted,
when the lights
got low and
time got short;

“On Trial,” “Canzonet” and “Non Dolet”

In the bedlam
of bed-land,
happy as babies,
active as rabbits,
me sky-father
you earth-mother;

“Farewell”, “Dionysus” and “Duffy Ain’t Here”

Kids, when I cut out of this life,
don’t turn on the tears and grieve;
kids, when I die I don’t want
any golden speeches saying kind things
about me or some windbag sniveling about
death’s sting, God’s grace and
the triumphant rise to heaven.
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