gender issues | SLHARPERPOETRY

Legacy

i’m no kind of Ishmael to expound
some great protagonist’s wayward saga,

& haven’t the slightest inkling of other

women’s misfortunes, nor do i know
if i’m even justified in such grief over a life
squandered on an endless vigil’s cries of
who sees me now? & now? & now?

who, besides this mirror i face,
knows my bulging litany of failures,
my spurious assumption of a character i detest?

i was born lacking the power
to reason my way out of this gravitational
force i’ve abhorred since youth, & which
now condemns me to lug about my globed
satellites—

to bear these adjuncts’ fleshy heft, as if I were
still umbilically moored to the gangway by my own
murdered albatross—

each a whale of white with its vacant eye
downcast like a faded damask rose.

STEPHANIE L. HARPER

“Legacy” made its debut appearance in Underfoot Poetry, and is the opening poem of my forthcoming chapbook collection, The Death’s-Head’s Testament, scheduled for release from Main Street Rag in March 2019, and available for advance orders NOW at a substantial discount ($6.50 per copy!). Please consider purchasing a copy of my book (click link above), and/or sharing my author page with your online communities to help get the word out! I am forever grateful for all of your support of my work!

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__________cover photo by Matthew Harper

“The cuddly-looking creatures come armed with ‘incredibly long copulatory spines,’” Ángel Valdés, Ph.D., sea slug expert in NatGeo Sea Bunnies

Adorable, uh, sea slugs…

So small, you might’ve remained undetected!
You wonderful creatures possess verve and charm,
all sporting accessories sharply erected

(your cuteness-incarnate is quite unaffected)
and poised for the pointed delivery of sperm.
So small, you might’ve remained undetected,

surviving the eons as nature selected,
earning maximum bang for the buck…What’s the harm
if a parcel perchance has a part that’s erected?

Where kits are concerned, a caboodle’s expected…
You sweet marine emblems of Easter disarm
with spirit too bold to remain undetected,

though vitreous bodies—with vision obstructed
by airborne banalities, vague and infirm—
still pigeonhole widgets (however erected)

as watertight proof our souls should be deflected
from courses and aims that outdistance the norm…
Too large for this world to remain undetected,
you hold in your quivers my hope resurrected!