Poetry News

Two Denis Leary poems

By Harriet Staff

Emerson alum Denis Leary hosted the Ploughshares 40th anniversary fundraiser a ways back, and The Boston Pheoenix put up unearthed two of Leary’s poems, published in said journal in 1977.

We just read them, and, you know, they aren’t bad! Here’s one:

He weeds the clouds

Dad screwed
another cigarette
into his lips
crossed his legs
folded his workman’s arms
along his
weed-stained lap

(you can’t speak now
not to him
he isn’t here
just watch
watch him

climb over the shed
the chubby lawn
home.
watch my daddy smoke fantasy.)

And here’s Leary in a little more ’90s Maggie Estep mode:

Posted in Poetry News on Monday, November 14th, 2011 by Harriet Staff.