Undersong

Brett Harrington

Brett Harrington’s (he/him) recent publications include Vernacular, ballast, Stirring, Psaltery & Lyre, Two Hawks Quarterly, The Shore, and elsewhere. He lives in Oregon.

Night’s black bristled

against my palm. Lost,

rapt in a fever’s thrum

by the blue-ghost lights,

I slogged beneath a canopy

of bleeding trees, far

beneath the clots

of scarlet clouds, lightning-

veined, bulged above,

until I came to a murky

lake and waded in,

long weeds lacing around

my ankles at every step

deeper in, deeper down,

and I felt that dread

I'd seen embalmed

in the eyes of the drowned,

and I heard the dread

beneath the rippling surface

of the song I hummed

deeper in, deeper down.