Harvard Review publishes poetry, fiction, essays, drama, graphics, and reviews. It is published twice yearly, in spring and fall, by Houghton Library of the Harvard College Library. Email us for a bookstore near you.

KATY LEDERER

The Tender Wish to Buy This World

The tender wish to buy this world.
The shedding of leaves from the wallet of morning.
Down low by the bridge in this city of money,
I will take down this axe, shatter gently this greed.
We are thinking of our heartfelt need,
Our man, his brain dreaming atop the clean pillow.
In the wallet of his soul he files the crisp new bills of morning.
This old depression, when the world will stretch, a field of deep ravines.
O Pale Pill, O Obsequious Friend to the needy and nixed, to the novitiates                                                    who play this mise en scène. . .
O Smotherer.
O Ploughshare.
O Savior and Deranger
Of the Senses.