Leslie Harrison

Poetry

Leslie Harrison’s second book, The Book of Endings (Akron 2017) was a finalist for the National Book Award. Her first book, Displacement (Mariner 2009) won the Bakeless Prize in poetry. Recent poems have appeared or are forthcoming in The New England Review, West Branch, The New Republic, and elsewhere. She lives in a magical neighborhood called Idlewylde, a stone’s throw north of Baltimore.

Fortune

And our hearts like whirlybirds like paper fortune tellers open close one way another pick a number a creature pick a color the paper comes together then almost apart inside each count past each color some dark some bright future is written you’ll be happy be loved go missing die young count out the red eleven the yellow seventeen the paper snaps like a flag a valve like the breast of a bird pull hard make a wish pick luck spell out daisy rose spell clover choose the cat the flying fish the bear make a promise make another clatter the paper unfold the flap here in this city you will love again the drowning man and then one day you’ll simply stop here in this city you’ll love for a time the man who practices murder studies slaughter the man who can kill you easily the only man you’ve ever been sure never will

“ Lately, my poems often arrive as weird mash-ups. This one includes those folded paper fortune tellers virtually every American kid makes and uses, sometimes obsessively; a ghost from the first time I moved to Maryland; the #metoo movement; a ghost from the third time I moved to Maryland; and the city itself, which I often find magical in some of the same ways we think breaking a bone or unfolding a piece of paper can influence the future. It is also the first poem I've ever crowdsourced. In my New Hampshire neighborhood, we called those fortune tellers cootie catchers. I took to social media to ask what everyone else called them—cootie catchers, for the most part, which didn't help. Luckily a few friends offered other names, including my favorite, whirlybirds. ”