Leslie Harrison

Biography

Leslie Harrison is the author of three books, most recently Reck (Akron, 2023). Her second book, The Book of Endings (Akron, 2017), was a finalist for the National Book Award. Her latest poems are published or forthcoming in Ploughshares, Image, West Branch, the New England Review, the Bennington Review, Orion, and elsewhere.

Leslie Harrison headshot.

See Work

POETRY / Summer 2025

Everything born and made is born and made

By Leslie Harrison

of the dead a million years of age-related faults / danger war hunger lust the extinct fallen stars / everything living falters is always on the verge

POETRY / Summer 2025

I wish to talk about the soul without talking about the soul

By Leslie Harrison

Cheap child’s toy/ incompetent user/ pilot error—tangled and hanging / Sway, spin, climb, and fall on its ladder its helix of string / Pleuston (meaning dwelling on the surface) / (meaning sail meaning float)

POETRY / Summer 2025

I wonder sometimes if the dead dream and if so of what

By Leslie Harrison

Dead I would dream the sky and the sky breaking into flakes and falling gathering itself into fat drops plopping into summer dust the acrid smell rising / I would dream the sky shivered the sky repeated as blue eye staring back as mote in...

POETRY / Summer 2025

Letter to an old love

By Leslie Harrison

& my memories of you are thin as cotton worn with age / & soft / & blurred from too much touching too much wear