Prologue to My Birth
This is neither a beginning
nor the prophecy of an ending
for beginnings & endings are lies
told to the once-living
it is not the exemplifying
of the aberrations the alchemists made
when they dethroned our Divine Queen
& transmuted her golden honey
into their iron pyrite philosophy
that left us to wither
inside our stunned husks
& so this is the emptying
of our errant devotion
to the denial of bodily hunger
the sanctified unbelieving
in fairytales of heavenly salvation
& it is the vital refilling
of infants’ gaping mouths
with earthly fortitude
& here now is the weeping
for our birth-story interred
with our long-dead mothers
who delivered us
& secured our velvety aboriginal flesh
to their warm breasts—
the saline unleashing
to purify our Logos
our will to creation our innate need
to manifest our god-selves
it is the recovering
of the Life that was severed from our psyches
when it was reduced to a Word
& uttered bereft of melody—
the unrepressed singing
Artemis awake from her slumber
beneath her ruined Temple in Ephesus
at last this is the extricating
of shame that made our tongues
untie us from our Mother’s holy earth
& swayed our ears to scorn her winged songs
even as she kept flying back to us
ever thick-limbed & fragrant
with nourishment from lavender blooms
solely that we should swell in our birthing cells
gorged on her royal jelly
This poem is my body
embryonic translucent
distended with new hope
it is my luminous black eyes
grown huge with their memory
of who I am
STEPHANIE L. HARPER
I’m thinking a lot today about the Divine Mother’s tireless devotion to her children. Happy Mother’s Day!
“Prologue to My Birth” was published in the collection, International Poetry Month 2017, curated by Bonnie McClellan, and appears in my chapbook, This Being Done, available now for order from Finishing Line Press, scheduled to ship in June 2018.
WOW! That’s all I can say! And looking forward to many rereads of it when your books comes out! You are a force to be reckoned with, Stephanie (in a good way)!
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“A force to be reckoned with” is an assessment I can get behind! 😉 Lol! Thanks, Lynne! Hope your Mother’s Day has been as lovely as you! 💖🌷😊
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Thank you! Yes, indeed, it’s been a good day. Hah – saw I accidentally wrote “books” but then that just might be true eh? Here’s to motherhood!
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Absolutely ensnaring. Read this several times. A wonderful piece – well done!
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Thanks, A.M., so pleased it resonated for you.
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This poem is exquisite
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Thank you. So pleased you enjoyed it, Lorraine!
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I found thisvso very very moving Stephanie, for very personal reasons. It is a very deep puece of writing. Thankyou so much.
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Yes, this one is an account of what amounted to quite the watershed for me both as a human woman and a poet. Long story short, a little over a decade ago, I was studying for Master of Divinity degree at a Theological Seminary, which I suppose served me well in terms of my discovery that the answers I sought weren’t there to be found.
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