flying we remain inside the tomb of ancient problemswith the news that we become to say we arein everything the dust does not report us to the placeswhere we might remain to set ourselves above the nightinside the night together as we see it move through otherswe begin with woven straw through animal intentionsthat the sea in us might know without a word, without a facein each of the remainders that the dust intends for uswearing other countries as the answer to the flightalong with everything we do not know and do not harborin our segmentation and the promises that we were givena steak in ambulance, a radiant fall in which the mindmust stop within. but in the hands and in the roadsthat we now wander in the morning, we see ourselvesas others are not known at all to light or to the darknesswhere we move and where we are this morning. the veinsof freedom that cut into us with ships arriving to endureand to replace the landing with the words that stopour motions in the salt and in the evening that collapseswhere another time and other ways are knownand do not wander without answer, or the questionis not offered. blank away the silence as we facethe traces of our endings and the bodies that refuseto be the color number we belong with, long agoin other floods and other networks that remain to placethe origins of languages and something that the seasonpulses to intend and to belong without a breath. butthe knife i see in every moment does not place usin the streams that we endure to find each otherin the blood outside the war. every laughter, every tearremains together for oblivion, our necks in ropeswithout a door to follow signs with, in the salt compilerwe support and we arrive to make a body everywheretonight, as sleep must be the answer that we knowto follow in the places we intend to understand. buteach of us is cut with knives in our endurance, the doubtthat makes us fall beside each road that lies towardthe interior,where others must not place us in the wiresthat do not stay. keep us there and keep us night againas we return to serve and to amend ourselves in everythingas we now know it to receive and to endure without a face.all our limbs have served us well beyond the peacethat does not know us, all the deer have wandered outof segmentation to resume and to abolish every screen.but these are not the confrontations of our messages,these are not the only ways that memory could speakto us in through the night that we endure to make a savageallegation in the winter promise of the news besideourselves. where we are and where we go is not the onlytime that number finds us to reveal our news to the alone,the tapir has remained together for our only nightin the abundance of collapse and the revealmentof our simply elevated carnage. we do not remainoutside the time because the strands do not connect usto follow questions. we are known to be the negligenceof reason as we falter to find other ways to see. the brainmust not be central, everything is consciousness as we awakento the war of revelation and resilienceas our color star returns
color network aviation origins
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“color network aviation origins” from POSTHUMAN NATIVE: THE ORCHID: by Roberto Harrison.
Published by Spiral Editions in 2025.
Copyright © 2025 by Roberto Harrison.
All rights reserved.
Reproduced by Poetry Daily with permission.
Roberto Harrison’s poetry books include Posthuman Native/The Orchid (Spiral Editions, 2025), Isthmus to Abya Yala (City Lights, 2023), Tropical Lung: exi(s)t(s) (Omnidawn, 2021), Tropical Lung: Mitologia Panameña (Nion Editions, 2020),Yaviza (Atelos, 2017), Bridge of the World (Litmus Press, 2017), culebra (Green Lantern Press, 2016), bicycle (Noemi Press, 2015), Counter Daemons (Litmus Press, 2006), Os (subpress, 2006), as well as many chapbooks. With Andrew Levy, Harrison edited the poetry journal Crayon from 1997 to 2008. He was also the editor and publisher of Bronze Skull Press which published over 20 chapbooks, including the work of many Midwestern poets. Most recently Harrison served as a co-editor for the Resist Much/Obey Little : Inaugural Poems to the Resistance anthology. He was the Milwaukee Poet Laureate for 2017-2019 and is also a visual artist. He lives in Milwaukee with his wife the poet Brenda Cárdenas.
Like the family of flowering plants this chapbook takes its name from, the poems in this book exhibit a dazzling technicolor array of kaleidoscopic, ebullient language: "memories bring[ing] horses through the night...like moving strings, they find other forms of morning." The jungle and its various technologies of living and dying are here, melded with an iteration of the speaker's corporeal self and the more-than-human world, too. The borders of each being congealed into a brilliant, pulsing mass: "to hold ourselves true / to the night inside us, to the night that we say is ours / this morning. i pray like the climate / and listen for the other jaguar’s response."
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