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Poets in the Blogosphere ~ Poetry Reading
Crown of Sonnets Featured at Vox Populi
My new crown of Covid-19 sonnets, A Crown Most Unroyal, is today’s poetry feature at Vox Populi. I’m deeply grateful to Editor Michael Simms for his enthusiasm, support, and vision in brilliantly pairing my poems with Thom Hartmann’s essay on the “GOP death cult” and enhancing the “legitimacy” of our contributions to the “political discourse.”
I wish you all safety, sanity, and every possibility for joy as we continue to plod through…
Poem up at Monstering Magazine
Photo by Joe Watts
I’m pleased to share that my poem “I Unstop Myself”is now live at Monstering Magazine. Thank you to editor Kristen Tollan for selecting my little tribute to Walt Whitman’s Song of Myself for publication alongside so many other inspiring women/women identifying voices.
What Autistic Advocacy Really Means
I’m veering from the beaten path of poetry today to share Ira’s phenomenally informative and vital post about autism advocacy.
TW – ableism, eugenics, “treatments”, torture, Judge Rotenberg Center, Spectrum 10K
You may have recently heard about the Spectrum 10K study and have seen autistic people’s, and non-autistic people’s, concerns about the study.Though I have plenty to say regarding this study, that’s not what I want to talk about right now.
What I want to talk about is the lasting effects that occur when autistic people are used as a commodity, a political football, a theoretical argument, as exploitation, when autistic people have to witness the dehumanization and legal torture of autistic people.
A study like Spectrum 10K brings out non-autistic people – parents of autistic people, teachers of autistic students, and many disability-adjacent “professionals” – who genuinely think it would be better if they aborted autistic fetuses in the future so that they didn’t “suffer.”
Although these interactions are upsetting, the worst part is when being autistic is used…
View original post 1,624 more words
Two Poems up at Cathexis Northwest Press
My poems, “Missive (to the White Oak’s Depths)” and “Elegy for My Former Self,” are live in the July 2021 issue of Cathexis Northwest Press. Heartfelt thanks to editor C. M. Tollefson for selecting these pieces.
Please also enjoy the audio renditions of these poems, courtesy of—your favorite poet and mine—the one and only Robert Okaji!
Poem Up at Neologism Poetry Journal
I’m so pleased to share my poem, “On Domestic Life & Other Stories of Carnage,” inspired by a certain maker of mischief, which is now live in issue 48 of Neologism Poetry Journal! Thank you EIC Christopher Fields for selecting this piece and for being an absolute professional and pleasure to work with!
Hope Springs Eternal & So Does Willie Nelson
Hope Springs Eternal & So Does Willie Nelson
Posted in honor of his 88th birthday!
Another death hoax? Gee, how original…
You folks ain’t fickle—guess I’ll give ya points
fer grit if not fer gumption. I’ve rolled joints
my friends, far stiffer than my tricky ankle,
imbibed red wine that’s older than yer gran’;
this here bandana holds more DNA
than most small countries on a holiday,
so keep your Internet! Just leave the bedpan
close, gas up the bus, & brace for twenty
more long years—well, give or take a decade.
The road’s a callin’, songs are in my head,
& my ol’ guitar plays as good as any;
there’s plenty weed to smoke & hair to braid:
So’s far as I can tell, I’m still not dead.
STEPHANIE L. HARPER
Meditation on Love
Inspired by Aristophanes’ mythological revelation in Plato’s Symposium. 6″ X 9″ acrylic and ink on paper.
Of These and All
In celebration of World Poetry Day, I offer the following “syntactic echo” of the ineffably ingenious innovator of American Poetry, Walt Whitman. This poetic exercise was the brainchild of one Alessandra Lynch (i.e., I’m not entirely to blame…), instructor/facilitator of my spring 2021 Poetry Workshop in the Butler University MFA Program.
Of These and All
“And of these one and all I weave the song of myself” ~ Walt Whitman, Song of myself 15
The left flesh-melon harbors a pool of sweat, the right flesh-melon harbors a
pool of sweat,
The perimenopausal woman hot-flashes in the kitchen, the bemused son dons
wool slippers in the kitchen,
The second husband purchases electric socks for his perimenopausal wife and
the ex-husband dissociates further from his ex-wife;
And these stoke my hankerings for donuts, and I make do with home-baked
banana-nut muffins,
And such as it is to amass five decades of knowledge, minus where I last left my phone,
more or less I am in fact speaking on it,
And of these hot flashes, cantankerous joints, suddenly-uncloseable pants and all I
justify the lament of my middle-age…
STEPHANIE L. HARPER
Letter to My Love, Flouting Miles
Letter to My Love, Flouting Miles
Dear Bob: Though the maps may superimpose
their abject separateness upon the thousands of miles
between us with traditional lettered-&-numbered-grids;
& though your birth into this timeline sixty years ago
graced the cosmos just shy of twelve earth-years
(also known as a full cycle of the Chinese zodiac)
before mine, I dare say that you & I are timeless—
certainly no less so than those archaic dragons
whose subterranean nests we are to extrapolate
from the fumaroles erupting at the maps' folds.
Of course, such implications of fierceness
can seem forbidding…
But for all the scaly terror of their talons
& spiky tails quaintly curled around caches
of sapphires, emeralds & gold medallions,
what those beasts are best known for
is interminable slumber, whereas we are wide awake—
besides, however notoriously considerable
our sundry existential concerns tend to be,
no one would fault us dogs for not knowing
our way home!
Long before I even knew I knew you,
something in me knew you were my One,
which is how I know I will find my way to your arms,
where I will remain yours forever, Stephanie.
SLHARPERPOETRY 