Barefoot in the briar, we step
outside ourselves
weathered
with April
The dirt’s wet
is warming
his shirt
off those angel
shoulders
⁂
Let's grow old there
in the grass
like we've already
left
Our hands
moon-soaked front seat
to heaven
when
the godlights
quit
⁂
Little cornucopias
of death, little
green eaters
after fire
snaking
sweetly serpentine
through scorched
soil, sting-
singing
Honey, I'm home
⁂
If midnight
was a kind
of infection where seasons
purpled
If the mind sank
the sinking
itched
to get right
with God
⁂
Rosebush rash
budding up
his inner thigh
Every corner
has yellow eyes
Every first kiss
a salt lick
I lick & lick
⁂
His wrongs
—my wrongs
His prick
—my prick
His nip
—my nip
His bite
—my bite
⁂
My hands
—his hands
caught festered
with what
they're
capable
⁂
When she asked where
I got the red
bumps
crawling
up my scrawny
limbs,
I was torn
from the green-brown
blur
Evidence
blistered
into the skin of it
⁂
What I mean when I say
I'm
from a small town
Gunfire &
nobody blinks twice
Gunfire &
everybody says
they love each
other
⁂
If it could bloom
rogue
in the crossfire
nameless
blameless
If I could
touch you there
there
there
there
Blackbird
An online journal of literature and the arts
close
Harrison Hamm
Harrison Hamm is a writer and educator from rural West Tennessee. His debut poetry chapbook, If It’s Country Music You Want (Poetry Society of America, 2027), won the 2025 Poetry Society of America Chapbook Fellowship. He is also the recipient of fellowships and awards from GLAAD, The Black List, Palette Poetry, and New York Stage and Film; his writing appears in Poetry, The Poetry Review, Best New Poets, The Kenyon Review, and elsewhere. In 2025, he was named a finalist for the Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fellowship by the Poetry Foundation. In 2027, he will receive an MFA in creative writing from New York University as a Goldwater Writing Workshop Fellow.
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