My poem “Though it is Written” is live at The Winnow Magazine! I greatly appreciate the care that The Winnow editing team took to pair my piece (scroll to page 20…) with such beautiful photography.
humanity
Nominated for a Pushcart Prize: Concerning the Delay of My Self-Immolation
Concerning the Delay of My Self-Immolation
“Ich kenne nichts Ärmeres
Unter der Sonn’, als euch Götter!”
“I know nothing poorer
Under the sun than you gods!” ~ from J. W. von Goethe’s “Prometheus”
when i sacrifice myself
as a gift to my fellow humans
i promise it will be for nothing
so hackneyed as to protest
some hypoxic septuagenarian
hunched on a mountaintop
mistaking every garish tendril
to wisp from his head
for a well-honed lightning bolt
not that i imagine
there’s any portion of my no-longer-
combustible flesh i might set
upon the balance that could be
tendered for passage to Elysium
but you can believe i’d pluck my own eyes
from their sockets send
the fabrics from my padded scaffold back
to China & traipse forever a blind
naked-as-a-mole-rat gnome in the garden of
unscented flowers if the stygian prophecies
were to divine any semblance of purpose
in chaining my corpse to the cliff face
& though these desiccating seasons
have yet to assemble
me into fuel for Helios’ pyre
if ever my splitting spurs should cease
to cry out dragon’s blood
i will blaze
with the ire of a rebel Titan—
my ashes will salt the gods’ tears
lapping the west’s black edge
STEPHANIE L. HARPER
“Concerning the Delay of My Self-Immolation” was published by editor Robert L. Penick in the 2019 edition of the print journal Ristau: A Journal of Being, and now enjoys the terrific honor of being nominated for a Pushcart Prize, for which I am ecstatically grateful!
Poem up at Eclectica
My “sleeping elephant,” Mt. Saint Helena (Sonoma County, CA), in whose mesmerizing shadow I grew up…
My poem, “Elephantine,” has been included with a fine array of poems in Eclectica magazine’s October/November 2019 issue’s Word Poem Challenge feature. The task was to compose a poem containing the words paper, indigo, brew, and cruise. Thank you editor Evan Richards for selecting this piece.
Dilated
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 & neon
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 murky (his brisk entrance at the climax
of my dilation coupled with his expertly-executed clasp
of my hand inspired my fleeting impression he’d been both)
& 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
because 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…
I’ve gathered that the dark splotches must be
cranberries—however vainly their vague 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
“Dilated” was published by CatheXis Northwest Press in November 2018 (they seem to be having difficulties with their website). Thank you to editor C.M. Tollefson for accepting this piece!
Remains the Dark
Remains the Dark
“How I wanted to be that sky—” ~ Ocean Vuong
What is want, if not the forsaken
self’s inexorable reversion to self?
Just as your virtual arrival at the event
horizon must propagate only departure
this eternal leaving you actually are
is the mouth’s forgotten swallow,
is sustenance un-sought,
is your every trace & its antithesis
at once ceasing to mean.
Though emptied, you are no less
unfathomable: the black belly remains
the dark you’ll never grasp how to be.
STEPHANIE L. HARPER
“Remains the Dark” was published in the Spring 2019 Showcase at The Zen Space, among a gorgeous collection of poetry, along with haiku and *tiny poems* by Lynne Burnett, the late Ron Evans (curated by Robert Okaji), and others, expertly edited by and adorned with the original black and white photography of the brilliant Daniel Paul Marshall.
Rhapsody in Bone
Rhapsody in Bone
Beneath the frozen fathoms of the sea,
a maiden’s body swells in rhapsody;
her father made her sustenance for fish
and creatures yet unseen by human eyes,
who feed until the carrion is spent.
The maiden’s bones roll over with the tide,
entwined with deep-sea coral colonies,
and where her eyes were, now are dwellings kept
by denizens who have no need of light
beneath the frozen fathoms of the sea.
Though water’s currents quell the dolphins’ calls,
the doleful cries her fecund corpse intones
uncoil the sodden hearts of others’ souls,
while hers, forsaken, flounders in the dark.
A maiden’s body belts a rhapsody,
because her father threw her from a cliff:
butt-hurt that she’d flat-out refused to stroke
his ego (teeny-peeny sack, he was,
of whims that changed as often as the winds),
her father made her sustenance for fish,
yet could not stop his daughter’s sunken bones
from breathing sirens’ cantos on the waves
and luring hunters to her icy grave—
that home to lonely spirits of the depths
and creatures yet unseen by human eyes!
A hunter plunks his line into the sea,
where deep below, a bony treasury
still bears the stench of murder’s milky dregs,
a tangy lunch for urchins clinging fast,
who feed until the carrion is spent.
Upon the swaying surf the hunter waits
with hero’s grit,’til suddenly, a lurch—
he’s hooked the skeleton woman’s rib! This catch
has heft suggesting banquets fit for kings,
who feed until the carrion is spent!
Oy veh! He hoists her bones onto his skiff
and shits his britches fearing he’s been cursed
by Death, herself, arisen from the depths—
her salt-worn bones a host for writhing eels,
and creatures yet unseen by human eyes!
Try as he may to toss her back, he finds
her long front teeth affixed—and can’t deny
this woman he’s revived deserves to live:
those naked, tangled limbs, her smooth, bald head…
Her father made her sustenance for fish,
yet could not stop his daughter’s sunken bones
from going viral with their exposés—
though water tries to quash the dolphins’ calls—
for songs of fuckhead fathers make us sick,
when maidens’ bodies swell in rhapsody!
Though many hunters know the songs of bones,
scarce few boast true cajones, fewer still
behold the face of Death with steadfast gaze,
and grow to love and keep all she became
beneath the frozen fathoms of the sea.
STEPHANIE L. HARPER
“Rhapsody in Bone” was first published in May 2017, in editor Nate Ragolia’s awesome journal, Boned: A Collection of Skeletal Writings, and was subsequently included in my chapbook, This Being Done.
Poem Up at Kissing Dynamite
THIS BEAUTIFUL POEM!!! 😍
My poem “Clandestine” is live in Issue 6 of Kissing Dynamite. I am grateful to the KD team for taking this piece.
Dead Rose at 5 Points Local
I can’t begin to express how deeply soul-nurturing it is for me to collaborate with such an extraordinarily generous and brilliant man and poet as Robert Okaji!
Dead Rose at 5 Points Local
(A collaborative poem written with Stephanie L. Harper)
Having plucked the disheveled
petals from the core,
she waits
for the dead to speak
of last week’s sweetness—
of damp upholstery
and worn-out shoes,
of locked chests
and the faint honey
of unrealized hope.
Magnetized,
I twist the stem;
I quarter the seeds and
blemish the plate.
Which north rings true?
Which faded-red
bridge reveals the lost
inner compass?
Our ice cubes clink
no answers, as the essences
of hibiscus, lavender,
and mint slip over my tongue,
concealing the cool
tang of her demurring
ghosts…
But when she says whisper,
touching her lips
with an index finger,
I hear distant trains
baying like wolves,
and smell the char of nights
trailing the undiminished
river, its waters flowing
in every possible
direction, away.
* * *
“Dead Rose at 5 Points Local” first appeared in
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Poem up at Prometheus Dreaming!
My poem, “Psychedelic,” is enjoying some lovely company during this week’s installment of Poetry Wednesday at Prometheus Dreaming! Thank you to editor David van den Berg for selecting this piece.
Pressing into the Depths
Pressing into the Depths
of an old-growth oak grove on your search for virgin peat having naturally preemptively considered the human calcaneus poised on its subcutaneous fat pad (the sturdy lovechild as it were of evolution & bipedal ambulation); you go whole-soled knowing nature engenders no freaks & that the point of weight-bearing actually is to sink-spring to life your very own rooted upward mobility—to elapse your mossy quiet’s once upon a time into cantilevered boom to mushroom & split your bark like a seething green superhero (who leaves you in tatters) harden yourself new gnarls to gather lichens & ever after phosphoresce the midnight fog like a moonbeam striking your cast-off glass slipper
“Pressing into the Depths” was published in the November 2018 peaceCenterbooks anthology, The Larger Geometry: poems for peace, edited by d ellis phelps.
SLHARPERPOETRY 