humanity

DAY 30! DAY 30!

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This feels a lot more like a beginning than an ending. I’ve accomplished a thing I wouldn’t have guessed I could (though, now I really have my work cut out for me with nearly 7,000 words of new poetry to edit!), and while my eyes are newly opened to the enormous specter of how very little I actually know in this life, I’m feeling eager for the next lesson. I am so humbled by and grateful for your interactions and support this month here on WordPress! From the bottom of my heart, thank you all!

convective_tower

Letter from the Other Side of Halfway 

…Taking a tip from the meadowlark, I head for the high
desert, my flight path crossing the sagebrush-dotted,
red earth, hoping I’ll soon look down & see you floating
in a sea of ten gallon hats, just beyond the convection
columns braced against the electric blue sky.
I don’t suppose your self-claimed exile looks anything
like I’ve imagined? It’s not with a small twinge of jealousy
that I seek consolation in your brand of solitude on the other
side of that horizon line…

The above is an excerpt. Read the whole poem (and catch up on Days 1-29) here!

Western Meadowlark

Chartreuse

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Chartreuse

Sour-apple-flavored candy

The team color of your alma mater’s rival

A jacket that never gets misplaced

The labial-nasal fricative of choice

for cicadas & fire-flies on a summer’s night

The vaguely perturbing chortle

of that quintessentially hip grandma

who reclaimed her youth through Yoga

The tinkle of that crystal bell

you long ago purchased in Prague for a song

An herbal cold remedy’s fizz

Key-lime pie’s tang

The fizz & the tang of a Midori Sour on the rocks

& the fuzzy socks

that     of course     you wouldn’t be caught dead in

The vinyl stool you still covet in your mother’s kitchen

& the satiny ribbon you once got for honorable mention

 

In other words

the dessert menu’s less lethal option

for the lactose intolerant on a date

My poem, “Prologue to My Birth” is up at Bonnie McClellan’s International Poetry Month Celebration

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Lavender Kiss_Matthew Harper

My poem, “Prologue to My Birth,” is up at esteemed editor, translator, poet and artist, Bonnie McClellan’s 2017 International Poetry Month Celebration! Bonnie will be featuring a poem per day for 28 days following this year’s theme, “Neural Networks: The Creative Power of Language.” I hope you’ll enjoy following this rich, diverse, international network of creative voices. Thank you for your support!

January 2017 Open Mic

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I am participating in the January 2017 Open Mic on Words and Feathers. Please go to the link provided to hear a rendition of my poem, “Anatomy of a Fustercluck,” which was recorded with help from my son, Matthew.

Many thanks to Crow for hosting this event!

Anatomy of a Fustercluck made its first and only prior appearance on Rattle magazine’s website in February 2016.

crow's avatarWords and Feathers

It’s a new year. We’ve all got these feelings still building up inside us like moisture inside a kernel of popcorn  If we don’t let them out soon, POP! out insides will be outsides and no amount of butter and salt will make it better.

I’m here for you. The January 2017 Open Mic is now open for you to record your poems/songs/rants/diatribes. But please, no money-making schemes.

The Skinny:

  1. Record yourself reading one of your own works.
  2. Post it on your site.
  3. Include a link to this site in your post.
    OR Comment on that month’s call for entries
    OR send me a message using the contact form.
  4. I will post a link with your name and poem title RIGHT HERE.
  5. It’s an open mic invitation. NOT a challenge.

Some tips:

  • Go simple.
    I record using my iPhone, then email/share the file with myself. I very rarely edit it…

View original post 247 more words

Alabaster

/ stephanielharper / 11 Comments

 

alabaster

I am a pink rose petal’s pale glow

black ash tamped in furrows
between the breath of the living
& the souls of the dead

the dawn’s blush unfurling over sand dunes

& seagulls soaring on thermal spirits
of iodine      salt     & shellfish

& sometimes     scattering in the wind
I can’t find where everything else ends     & I begin

Now rising from the morning hush     this cloud of me
speaks to the red tail hawk perched on a streetlamp
& tells her I’m fine     because I’m still not sure
how to talk about not being fine

I am an instar     trying to be
the clearest version of myself     to sculpt
a final skin of lucent crystal

so that when you come to see my cinder eyes
glinting diamond dust     I will be
the embered dusk bleeding into the sea

& you will know the truth of me

embered-dusk

A previous version of this poem first appeared in Sixfold magazine, winter 2014.

Despair

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bedroomdespair

They creep along the crease where plaster’s link
with geometric     terra cotta inlays
slips beyond the statutory pane’s oblique
illumination         Squalor’s dreg-lined byways

evince these shadows’ huddled histories
of furtive ventures through the crevices
where nights yield to darkening that sullies
the dark     & dank     spore-stippled surfaces

despair the light of noon to bare their scourge
No teakwood bed     nor wicker chair     will mask
depravity     as Geishas deftly forge
refinements to obscure the blights of dusk

What’s bent by vice yet breaks for dearth of rest
& makes its bed with vermin as needs must

STEPHANIE L. HARPER