Poetry

On Seeing

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Moose Lips!

“What we say we see says a lot about who we are.” – Ocean Vuong

“Why is no one ever looking when I use air quotes?”  – Matthew Harper

Sunspots through cloud-cover
Moose lips
Butterfly fuzz
Honey bees kissing lavender stalks
Spring breezes blowing cottonwood seeds into drifts 

Convection popcorning in the flame-blue east
Summer shimmering hayfield-rivers
Dust-devils whirling out of a midday calm
A dragonfly poised above a stagnant pond
its wings “wiggling—they don’t flap” 

The spider     like Godzilla’s more graceful cousin
terrorizing the webcam’s livestream
of pedestrians on a bridge over the Willamette
attended by the oblivious
broadcasts of a classical radio station 

A mother skunk trailed by three kits
emerging at midnight from the greenspace
across the street—their bottle-brush tails
going vertical    as my son    quivering
encroaches with his camera—
& erring on the side of sweet mercy     again 

A one & a half twisting layout somersault
from a trampoline—lights swirling in figure-eights
fifteen feet above the ground

Moose lips     & butterfly fuzz

The ease of every convoluted moment

The relative difficulty of ease

STEPHANIE L. HARPER

Butterfly Fuzz 3

Photos by Matthew Harper 

 

elegy (20171129)

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Out of the ashes of heartbreak rises the phoenix of poetry. A brilliant piece by the illustrious Charles Payne on the recent loss of his pooch, Bodhi.

crow's avatarWords and Feathers

i pass through a cold spot
the paranormal experts
tell me this is a sign
some formerly corporeal being

is absorbing energy because
it wishes to communicate
or otherwise engage
with a world of mucus-leaking
sacks of wobbly flesh

who’s a good boy?

i don’t discourage the flickers
at the edge of my vision
the sound of jangled tags
the clacking of long toenails

happy to ride a bus
i’ll get off only when they make me
without a known destination

still

lately i gaze
out the window at a soft horizon
and feel the need for heaven

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The Rabbit

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rabbit

Once upon a midday gleaming, as the sun perched, eager-seeming,
above my homestead’s weedy patches of forgotten sod,
whilst I sighed, wondrous with gloom—oh, how that sky did fiercely loom!—
upon my yard’s bedraggled flora a brown-grayish rabbit gnawed—
with a certain pluck & gusto, chose its clumps, & briskly gnawed,
ever mindful where it trod.

I presumed it was a visitor from lettuce fields abroad,
for it was fuzzy, quick & small, cute as a little cotton ball,
but unlike any other rabbit that I’d ever seen before…
I distinctly don’t recall if it was springtime, or late fall—
where I live, these stark environs kind of always look like fall—
lacking features to enthrall.

Soon, my feelings started seeping—the way shadows take to creeping—
from their places of safekeeping, ‘til they lumbered into view
(as for that moment’s peace I’d sought, when with my sanctuary wrought,
I’d crawled inside to stay—& stayed much longer than I knew,
It could’ve dried & blown away, for all I really knew…)—
& there was nothing I could do.

Now, the rabbit, on grasses chewing—my soul eschewing—is my undoing:
My vain attempts to woo it hither churn up far too much ado,
so, I’m here, just sitting, stewing, my years accruing (they keep accruing)
of the untold days’ ensuing—garish sunlight streaming through
(when all is said & done, I’ll bet that sun just seeps right through!);
also, I’d swear that fur-ball grew!

With this craving so unnerving, I will wither undeserving
of even one, small, savory serving of Hasenpfeffer stew—
my wee compadre, to be sure, won’t soon be rapping at my door:
I could with tears & snot implore, writhing prostrate on the floor
but it wouldn’t give two shits if I dried up right on this floor—
yet to hunger, evermore!

STEPHANIE L. HARPER

Here’s to art imitating poetry imitating poets imitating life—or something like that…

Thanksgiving

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Wild Turkey

The birds have been beheaded, stripped of togs.
 The winter squash has made it to the store.
Cranberries left behind Wisconsin bogs.
Potatoes are appreciated more.

We’ll gather at the table for our spread,
& hungry mouths will start to salivate:
“Please pass the butter!”––“Don’t forget the bread!”––
“I’ll take a breast!”––“Pile taters on my plate!”

To celebrate abundance with respect
for those who till the soil & reap the wheat––
we’ll drug them up with tryptophan’s effect,
& top it off with pie to call it sweet…

Then, pants unbuttoned, lying on the floor,
we’ll muster up the strength to eat some more!

I stepped into the Wayback Machine to retrieve this one! Wishing you and yours out there in WordPress land a blessed Thanksgiving recovery! Since I’m decidedly NOT thankful for the genocide of Native Americans that is an irredeemable blight on our Nation’s past (not that we’re doing so hot in the present, either), I’ve been thinking of  this day as a remembrance of everything that’s wholesome, just, good purely for goodness’ sake, and enriching in this life! Thanks, fellow bloggers and friends, for your abiding, positive presence in cyberspace, and for making a difference for me, and for each other! With love to all!

STEPHANIE L. HARPER

Hallowed

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Halloween1

Tonight is the night for a sinister scene:
When the bare trees bask in the full moon’s light,
the spirits will stir, for tonight’s Halloween.

The spiders start spinning their squalor so keen,
 while witch-chants crescendo in vanishing light,
 because it’s the night for a sinister scene!

As fog tricks our senses to sense the unseen
death throes of autumn—October’s last fight—
the spirits will stir, for tonight’s Halloween.

Gorging on sweets ‘til our faces turn green,
we party with all of our fake-blood-soaked might—
we’re ready, all right, for a sinister scene!

From ether of frothy libations we glean
a strange sort of yen for a terrible fright:
The spirits will heed, for tonight’s Halloween!

Our most hallowed guests, the shadows, have been
witness to all of our wrongs not set right…
Tonight is the night for a sinister scene!
Make way for the spirits—tonight’s Halloween!

STEPHANIE L. HARPER

Matthew in the Fountain

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In the Fountain 1999

August 1999, age 14 months

In the spray’s scattering
of afternoon rays
           you pass before the sun
a toddling pointed-toe satellite
eclipsing all
but its faint red ghost

Summer haloes you in sun-white down
mottling the concrete’s cool glisten
like a memory from the womb

Watching the world swim into focus
in your smart brown eyes
           your round cheeks
flushing with the kisses of angels
showering from the sky          I realize
in a shutter’s split-second
                          I’ve traversed eternity

My child    you burst open my heart like the sun
bursts infinitely open each fountain drop

STEPHANIE L. HARPER

This poem appears in my chapbook, THIS BEING DONE, forthcoming with Finishing Line Press, someday (I’ve been hearing that they’re experiencing some delays…). The little cherub featured above, in one of the only decent photos I’ve ever taken in my life (in that the subject isn’t my own thumb, or some stranger’s butt), is my son, Matthew, who’s now 19 (oy!), and whose prowess as a photographer did not come from me. I’ve previously shared an example of his amazing work on the blog HERE.

Dilated

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house finch

To think that we see
them so often     yet so rarely consider
how those piebald songbirds     so at home
on a snow-scape in their portable parkas
are made of the exact same stuff we use
to fill up our electric sky      & shocking
watermelon nylon winter coats     which must be
designed expressly for us to go out there looking
ridiculous     not to mention callous (clothed     as it were
in outright exploitation)—is the thing I’m pondering
as I observe through the window a little house finch
all feathery & poofed with his flushed cheeks
flitting over the snowy patio     pecking among the abandoned
bench-feet for invisible     if not entirely non-existent
morsels     & hawking an air of self-possession that is obvious
even to me in my current     incapacitated state

As for whether the red-crowned
retina specialist who conducted my examination
was young &/or fetching     the prospect was relatively murky
(the simultaneity of his brisk entrance with the climax
of my dilation expertly flourished by his robust clasping of my
hand     had inspired my conjecture that he might’ve been both)
& you’d better believe all bets were off the very moment
the white-cloaked     smeary hulk of him ambushed my defenseless
retinas with an impossibly aggressive radiant device
thus affording me the pivotal elucidation:
that a). the anomaly on my fundus autofluourescence images
is simply an unremarkable patch of variegated pigmentation
b). it was only natural to expect that the definition
of such a lexical wonder as variegated would elude the layperson
& c). I am indeed obliged by gratuitous pigeonholing
to take categorical offense

Not that I’m usually so bold
as to co-opt medical jargon     but I’m pretty certain
variegated is the only word that could aptly
account for what’s right now comprising
the better part of my visual experience
as embodied by this polka-dotty
aberration     also known as a scone
I resorted to purchasing in the hospital café
thus affording myself the pivotal illusion:
that a). I’m quite absorbed in an earnest task
while waiting here in the lobby for my ride
b). I wouldn’t otherwise be averting
my freakish     black gaze from passersby
& c). I’m the kind of person
who always smiles at everyone     as if to say
I accept you for who you are no matter what…    
 
From its orange piquancy
I’ve gathered that the scone’s dark splotches must
be cranberries—however vainly their vaguely moist
sweet-tang serves to redeem their crumbly substrate’s
alleged alimentary function

Still     the finch remains
staunchly committed to my functional blindness
as if by sheer force of his impending command
its concomitant scone-silage would transcend
the glass     & sift to the frozen ground

STEPHANIE L. HARPER

It may not surprise you to learn that I wrote this poem in January 2017, while brooding over a certain sociopolitical debacle. This is its first exposure to the light of day…

Painted Chickens

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chicken mug

Photo of actual coffee mug in question, circa 1994.

Twenty years ago
I received a birthday gift
from a close college buddy-slash-sometime lover
(What on earth were we thinking?).
Back then, our past was already in the past
& twenty-four was already not young.
He gave me a coffee mug
covered in chickens—

yes, painted chickens—

three plump specimens posed around the outside,
& one that looks like an index finger
with an eye, a comb, a beak, & a wattle,
slapped onto the bottom.

How, I can’t fathom,
but my friend knew that those chickens
with their orange-red, expressionistic bodies
would be a boat-floater for me—

the one time I had slept with him
had been an epic shipwreck,
with a silent drive to the airport in its wake;

on the way, we choked down pancakes,
& I stifled sobs in my coffee,
averting my eyes
from the helpless horror in his.
I then flew off into the wild, wide sky,
bewildered, drowning.

Somehow, for years to come,
his southern gentlemanly charms
still served to allure:
he kept his promise to write
& took pains to catalogue for me
the details of his worldly escapades
& various, accompanying sexual conquests,
always making sure to emphasize
the ways in which they were hot for him,
so as to prove those trysts’ relative rightness.

Then, came the birthday gift—
the unexplainably gratifying
chicken cup.

Still burning hot
& feathered in their chili-pepper red,
royal purple & verdant green cloaks,
my static & impossibly happy
aphrodisiac chickens
blush like lovers on a Grecian urn;

clucking, urgent.

My southern gent,
now so long ago flown from this callous coop,
wooed another & had his own brood,
as, in due course, did I,
but the mug, no worse for wear, remains
a spectacular feature—
like a bright birthday piñata
(with its promise of sweet reward)—
of my sacred morning ritual.

These chickens,
still ecstatically surprised,
letting out unabashed, open-beaked caterwauls,
adorn my most aged & prized coffee mug;
a vessel, perfectly-sized,
it cups its contents so adoringly,
fiercely,
like an egg enveloping its cache of gold,
as I take privileged sips.

The big chicken on the left
might actually be a rooster,

& that one on the bottom,
a middle finger.

STEPHANIE L. HARPER
Chicken with attitude

“Painted Chickens” was first published in the winter 2014 edition of Sixfold magazine.  I was inspired to post it on the blog today by a dream I had the other night involving a brood of chickens who were all trying to ingratiate themselves to me with their eggs, all of which were severely malformed and/or proportionally impossible to have been laid by the given, proud clucker presenting it. One of the eggs gifted to me was shaped like a tiny, raw roast that fit in the palm of my hand. Trying not to snub this sweet avian’s generosity, I remarked, with all the casualness I could muster, “Oh, it looks like this one isn’t quite done yet,” and I gently set it back in the nest. From the slapped expression on my friend’s feathered little face, however, I’m pretty sure she knew the score… A viable analysis of this one as yet eludes me, so I’m definitely open to suggestions!    

My poem,”Tempted,” is up at Figroot Press…

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My poem, “Tempted,” is now live at Figroot Press!

Sappho-Issue-Cover

Many thanks to editor Tamara Franks for including this quirky (now, no-longer-lonely) piece — a sestina in the voice of a siren, page 19! — in Figroot’s first special themed issue, For My Lover, She is Fair: a Sappho Tribute, available for free download in pdf or purchase in print HERE!

 

Last Day of Pre-Publication Sales for Robert Okaji’s Chapbook

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Don’t get left in the cold as Robert Okaji’s wondrous poetry takes the literary world by storm! 🌩 Let’s celebrate the difference that Bob’s vital words have made in so many lives, and take today’s last opportunity to make a difference for him! 😊

robert okaji's avatarO at the Edges

From Every Moment a Second

Today is the final day of the pre-publication sales period for my new chapbook, From Every Moment a Second. If you intended to order a copy but haven’t yet (the dog ate your homework, you had to wash your hair, poetry? you’re kidding, right?), time’s running out. Order here.

Many, many thanks to the members of this blog community for supporting my writing.  I am truly grateful for your wisdom, advice, humor and willingness to help me traverse the strange and wonderful worlds of poetry and publication.

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