3 Poems by Harrison Wade
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Illustration by: Pamella (Olive) Pinard
September 1 for Sarah
Hass knows the names
of so many trees
and flowers, fruit-
bearing things. His
words make me jealous.
I pretend to be wary
of his style, but it’s true.
I’m jealous of specificity,
the ability to name
some thing.
Your mother knows
every English flower. We agreed,
it would be a nice skill to have. Walking to the beach,
you tried to name what we passed.
A neighbour’s tree is
starting to grow small,
red berries in narrow clumps
of a dozen, maybe
sixteen. I wish I knew
what it’s called so
I could name it for you.
And then One Day we Stopped
i. The monkey’s paw was gone. It wasn’t actually a monkey’s paw,
of course, we only called it that. Laura blamed ghosts. Mell got
on her hands and knees and started looking for it. I knew Sam
had stolen it for an incantation. It was her mother’s wedding ring.
Her mother had died four years ago. Her father still sold blueberries
by the pound and baked into pies on the side of the highway.
I had never met him. I screamed when we heard the thud upstairs.
Mell laughed, then shut up. Sam pretended to be afraid too, but
started crying. She kneeled at the foot of the stairs with her hands
clasped. “What is it?” Laura said. “How should I know?” Sam said.
There were footsteps, and for a moment it seemed like everything
was perfectly still, right down to the atom. There is nothing more
unnatural than that. But Sam was pleading. Laura held Mell against
her leg. Something was coming down the stairs and suddenly it was
Bronwyn, only Bronwyn. “I hope I didn’t scare you,” she said.
I reached for Sam’s shoulder but she was gone. Bronwyn moved
into her room. We talked about looking for Sam a lot, all the time
it seemed, about driving and calling and holding seances. And then
we talked about it less. And then one day we stopped.
ii. Sam appeared at Laura and Mell’s wedding. She looked haggard.
We were all thrilled though and danced and drank wine and ate
the blueberry pie she brought. We sat down to talk about the years
in that house we shared. Then I said, “Where did you go, Sam?”
and she looked at me like I had just sprouted horns, only a few
years too late. “To find mom, of course. Let me introduce you.”
And she went and got her. Sam’s mother was a corpse.
We all shook her hand. They were both corpses.
Old Leo Tolstoy’s Picture
For valentine’s day three years ago, I wrote you
erotic Mario Kart: Double Dash!! haikus,
because I knew you used to play it a lot with
your younger brother until that Christmas
at his place you both got drunk on Old Style,
and you made fun of his wife’s Nissan van,
and he told you to fuck off, and so you stole
his Bose bluetooth speaker and one of his
New Balance shoes, just one, and we ran
out into the inch of wet snow, laughing, and
down to the bus stop to go home. Anyway,
I’m thinking of all of this because I found them
in the copy of Anna Karenina I gave you
for your birthday last year when you wanted
to know more about your heritage, or at least
that’s what you said. And I know you never
touched it. You didn’t touch it for an entire year
and then left it here so I don’t understand
how the haikus could have ended up there.
They’re shit, anyway. Away from
the crowds/ of Mushroom City, Koopa/
slowly takes Boo’s cock. And
Only Luigi/ knows the Yoshi Circuit
short-/ cut is for cruising. And so
on. But they got me hard. Maybe only
because they reminded me of you. With
DK Mountain/ watching, Peach licks Birdo’s clit/
and finally loves. I came all over
them. Some cum even dripped
onto old Leo Tolstoy’s picture.
Harrison Wade is a writer living in Vancouver, working on a PhD in Cinema Studies. His poems have been published in In the Mood Magazine, Echolocation, pretty cool poetry thing, and elsewhere. Follow him on Instagram (@bgonedullcare).
