“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

Photos by Matthew Harper