Painted Chickens

November 3, 2015November 3, 2015 / stephanielharper / Leave a comment

Found in Google Images, this is the actual mug which I still own (isn’t it wonderful?), that is featured in this poem.

Painted Chickens made its debut appearance in Sixfold Magazine, winter 2014 edition.

Prompted to post it by Amy T., I dedicate it here to all of us who have looked back on our youths, shaken our heads,

and laughed…

Twenty years ago
I received a birthday gift
from a close college buddy-slash-sometime lover
(What on earth were we thinking?).
Back then, our past was already in the past
and twenty-four was already not young.
He gave me a coffee mug
covered in chickens––

yes, painted chickens––

three plump specimens posed around the outside,
and one that looks like an index finger
with an eye, a comb, a beak, and a wattle,
slapped onto the bottom.

How, I can’t fathom,
but my friend knew that those chickens
with their orange-red, expressionistic bodies
would be a boat-floater for me––
the one time I had slept with him
had been an epic shipwreck,

with a silent drive to the airport in its wake;
on the way, we choked down pancakes,
and I stifled sobs in my coffee,
averting my eyes
from the helpless horror in his.
I then flew off into the wild, wide sky,
bewildered, drowning.

Somehow, for years to come,
his southern gentlemanly charms
still served to allure:
he kept his promise to write
and took pains to catalogue for me
the details of his worldly escapades
and various, accompanying sexual conquests,
always making sure to emphasize
the ways in which they were hot for him,
so as to prove those trysts’ relative rightness.

Then, years later, for my birthday,
came the unexplainably gratifying
chicken cup.

Still burning hot
and feathered in their chili-pepper red,
royal purple and verdant green cloaks,
my static and impossibly happy
aphrodisiac chickens
blush like lovers on a Grecian urn;
clucking, urgent.

My southern gent,
now so long ago flown from this callous coop,
wooed another and had his own brood,
as, in due course, did I,
but the mug, no worse for wear, remains
a spectacular feature––
like a bright birthday piñata
(with its promise of sweet reward) ––
of my sacred morning ritual.

These chickens,
still ecstatically surprised,
letting out unabashed, open-beaked caterwauls,
adorn my most aged and prized coffee mug;
a vessel, perfectly-sized,
it cups its contents so adoringly,
fiercely,
like an egg enveloping its cache of gold,
as I take privileged sips.

The big chicken on the left
might actually be a rooster

and that one on the bottom,
a middle finger.

Confessional

September 13, 2015September 13, 2015 / stephanielharper / 5 Comments

“Forgive, O Lord, my little jokes
on Thee
And I’ll forgive Thy great big
one on me.” Robert Frost

Today I used a piece of toilet paper––
so ingenious how the squares are perforated––
as a bookmark.

I marked the beginning
of a story in a journal
I pretended to mean to read soon.

My pretensions in the bathroom
are no more elaborate, I’d guess, than those of any other,
so why don’t we confess them, even to ourselves?

Confessionals are outfitted nowadays
with porcelain appliances, brass fixtures,
marble vanities with stacks of prayers in paperback––

(we futilely pray no one presumes these rituals
of bargaining our way out of bondage
to repugnant functions)––

to function as the ultimate ruse.
For no sleight-of-hand swipe performed
(however carefully) with unrolled, folded squares,

nor the most careful illusions of luxury
contrived of bodacious poses above prodigal devices,
will lessen the strain of such unnatural squatting.

Nature will still call from night’s drawn curtain,
beckoning us to the primal business

of dangling truth.

A Human Soul’s Resurrection from Shame

September 10, 2015September 10, 2015 / stephanielharper / 2 Comments

Houseman, Paula (2015). Odyssey in a Teacup. Sydney, Australia: Wildwoman Publishing

Review by: Stephanie L. Harper

Paula Houseman’s Odyssey in a Teacup (purchase on Amazon) takes readers along with protagonist, Ruth Roth, on a brilliantly crafted, classic hero’s journey. From her initial stirrings, awakenings, and blaring Call to Adventure, through her protracted Initiation of descents and dashings upon the rocks (during which phase Ruth’s internal “bullshit detector” becomes a well-oiled, exquisitely adept machine), to her ultimate, victorious Return to the Self, Ruth encounters and defeats a series of soul-sucking harpies, who time and again try to bite off more than they can chew.

The decided “black sheep” of her family, the ruthlessly undermining treatment Ruth endures as a child is almost too terrible to see… Almost. If it were not for Houseman’s brazen wit, keen understanding of the ancient, universal forces at work in the very roots of humanity, and magnificently bawdy humor, Ruth Roth’s Odyssey would be little more than a lonely trek. Instead, in the very first chapter, when Ruth triumphs in an embarrassing modern-day encounter with “Cyclops,” we rush to back our champion with an unprecedented resolve — never leaving her side for the duration — and we are rewarded over and over with wretchedly wonderful, belly-shaking laughter, and liberating tears.

Houseman resurrects from the darkness (of fundamental, moralistic terrorism) the human soul, which we learn as children to regard as too grotesque as to be worthy of sight. In relating one such example of our conditioned belief in the shamefulness of our own humanity, she astutely observes the collective sentiment, “A cloud passed in front of the sun as if to stop it from seeing. Even nature was mortified.” But as the story progresses, such sentiments prove to be nothing more than our fearful, self-defeating human projections onto Nature, and Houseman’s heroine shines brightly — with moxie, and with the categorical approval of the gods and goddesses — in the sun.

Paula Houseman possesses all the verve, aplomb, and wisdom lauded of veteran authors. With rare authenticity and vigor, Houseman reveals the formative events of Ruth Roth’s life in a series of vignettes that infuse the pandemonium of Jackson Pollock expressionism with the clarity of purpose of the Sistine Chapel ceiling. We sense in each instance that Ruth ought to be asking herself, incredulously, How can this be my life? How can Nature permit another day of this existence to unfold? We feel we ought to avert our eyes, but we are captivated by a truth which strikes so close to home for us, because it so aptly mirrors that most basic of human truths: we are not born knowing how to recognize, much less question, the aberrations of dysfunctional family life, as they comprise our normal experience.

Yet, despite the mythical monsters’ best efforts to thwart her, Ruth Roth prevails as our champion. She becomes our mouthpiece, articulating for us the question that has always been lurking there, beneath the living room’s imitation woodgrain wallpaper, by exposing the fantastic lie that has surreptitiously enlisted our complicity in maintaining others’ fragile illusions at the expense of our realities.

Houseman’s Odyssey in a Teacup is epically defiant, bold, painful, hilarious, soul-fortifying, and a must-read for anyone who has ever dared (or hoped) to look at themselves in the mirror and ask the question, How in the hell have I survived?

Commode & Consequence

July 16, 2015February 4, 2020 / stephanielharper / 1 Comment

Before I share my epic tale with you,
please be advised adversity’s in tow,
which might resemble miseries a’ brew
in feudal farm communities you know…

Beleaguered by the wretched blight of drought,
our crops once verdant withered in their beds;
our throats were parched; the wells had all dried out
below that unjust sun above our heads!

In hope’s last ditch, we pulled ourselves together
beneath the menace of that burning sun.
We schemed to overcome the nasty weather—
& I was chosen as the lucky one

who’d take on brutal aristocracy
inside the castle’s potent, stone defenses.
Though, how I’d get in was a mystery
quite disagreeable to my frail senses…

Somehow I’d scale that granite carapace
& like a burlap sack half-filled with flour,
I’d drop to certain death in pale disgrace—
not how I’d hoped to spend my final hour.

My neighbors pushed me up the steep façade—
a feat achieved with cold tenacity
& pitchforks poised to terrorize & prod
lest reason should discourage bravery.

It wasn’t long before I’d reached the top
& feebly slumped down to the pitch below.
A happy “humph” in answer to my “plop”
was all I heard from friends now all turned foe…

Alone, engulfed in stone, my knees felt weak
& quaked like autumn oak’s last clinging leaf.
I yearned to hide, yet knew I had to seek
a remedy to slake my kinsmen’s grief
(for well I knew they had a valid beef).

So there I stood, a little worse for wear,
with bumps & bruises forming by the tick;
my clothes were torn & leaves were in my hair
& knots inside my gut made me feel sick.

I scuttled ’round a pillar like a prawn
might claw its way along the ocean’s depths
until I reached the Kingdom’s royal lawn:
I lack for words (for nothing rhymes with “depths”)

to illustrate the wonder of that scene!
A massive span of fertile, rolling leas
with dewy, dappled hues of gold & green
that thrummed with buzz of busy honey bees,

who hovered over clover, grass & hay
(a beast of burdens’ grazing paradise!)
abounding with bright blooms in bold array
encircling the field for five miles thrice

on winding tendrils’ fierce vitality
entwined amongst the breezy willow trees.
Those flowers’ wafting scent arrested me,
for blooms by any name still make me sneeze…

In stealth, I made a masterful retreat
& ducked into a marble entry way
in time to fall in line with marching feet
of soldiers just returning for the day.

In dusk’s disguise, I tiptoed through the door,
then turned a corner leading to a room
with marble, thatch & porcelain décor—
when lowing rumbles harkened certain doom

as royalty approached my hiding place!
I understood those bellows as a sign
that it was nigh time to obscure my face
from frightful sounds uncommonly bovine!

With bland & dull brass clanking of a bell,
Her Majesty’s arrival was announced
by sentries who obeyed that deathly knell
& cleared a path, avoiding getting trounced.

Her shadow darkly filled the room’s ingress—
it was the very last thing I did see,
for my reaction to the acridness
took me headlong behind a porcelain scree.

The queen did then ascend her huge structure
behind which I had scrambled in my fear.
Against my better sense to conjecture,
deciphering, I learned some facts quite queer:

The luckless vantage point I had assumed
was probably the worst I could have chosen,
for suddenly the room became perfumed:
Suffice to say, the stench was not ambrosian.

From her stout, four-hooved figure there did gush
a foul, brown, sticky liquid, and a moan…
What followed was an eerie-sounding flush
broadcast from somewhere deep inside her throne!

That sound inspired a shocking calculation—
a reckoning I would not soon forget:
Our greedy queen had scorned our trepidation
& built herself a shiny, new toilet!

(‘Twas bad enough that founts no longer spurted
from natural springs that ere sustained crop-yields—
but now I knew their flow had been diverted,
that drought alone had not destroyed the fields…!)

How rage then filled me, I can’t quite express.
Royal or not, that beast above my head
released a demon I could not suppress—
the queen was on that throne, but I saw red!

I can’t account for just what happened next
(the kind of thing, perhaps, when one feels vexed?),
but from prodigious muscles that I flexed
Her Highness found herself somewhat perplexed!

Apparently, I’d lifted up that throne
& heaved it like a bundled bale of hay!
The blaring “Moo!” the queen did then intone
was indication that she rued the day!

There then arose an uproarious cheer
from far & wide through stony vestibules.
A grateful sentry offered me a beer
& furnished for my cause a pair of mules

to tow away my handsome hero’s pay
in a cart that just could scarcely hold her.
Discovering I’d somehow saved the day,
if not wiser, surely, I felt older…

As I approached our township with my haul,
my family rejoiced & shouted, “Wow!”
From this day forward I’ll be known by all:
The farmer who dispatched that dreadful cow…

Though my remaining days will yet accrue,
tonight, it’s safe to say that I’m a winner…
The coals are glowing in my barbecue,
Because Chateaubriand is what’s for dinner!

3-DAY-QUOTE CHALLENGE

July 8, 2015July 10, 2015 / stephanielharper / Leave a comment

I decided to post this “Challenge” (also located on my About/Challenges page) as a single blog entry on my Home page, since I am quite pleased with how it all turned out. The quotations are from among my favorite literary influences (one representative each from poetry, fiction, and non-fiction), and the artwork is my own. Enjoy! 🙂

3-DAY-QUOTE CHALLENGE

4yearoldadult has very graciously taken it upon himself to give me a much needed swift kick in the pants, to get myself into the habit of “blogging” more regularly. I know that this medicine will be good for me, so I thank him from the bottom of my heart for his encouragement and enthusiasm, and for his efforts to connect with people through cyber-space, to make the world a little bit better!

Day 3: From Women Who Run With the Wolves, by Clarissa Pinkola Estes

When a woman pretends to press her life down into a nice, tidy little package, all she accomplishes is spring-loading all her vital energy down into shadow. ‘Fine. I’m fine,’ such a woman says… Then one day, we hear she has taken up with a piccolo player and has run off to Tippicanoe to be a pool hall queen…

This is about how it happens.
One day, we decide that we are DONE being everything but who we are. Unfortunately, we usually have to learn the hard way that we are really not all that into piccolo players… We owe it to ourselves to remember who we are and what we do want to be doing, and then we have to start doing it, at all costs — because the alternative, which is existential death, is a far, far cry from a substitute for life.

Day 2: Excerpt from Douglas Adams’ The Hitchhikers’ Guide to the Galaxy

Vogon poetry is of course the third worst in the Universe. The second worst is that of the Azgoths of Kria. During a recitation by their Poet Master Grunthos the Flatulent of his poem “Ode to a Small Lump of Green Putty I Found in My Armpit One Midsummer Morning” four of his audience died of internal hemorrhaging, and the President of the Mid-Galactic Arts Nobbling Council survived by gnawing one of his own legs off. Grunthos is reported to have been “disappointed” by the poem’s reception, and was about to embark on a reading of his twelve-book epic My Favorite Bathtime Gurgles when his own major intestine, in a desperate attempt to save life and civilization, leaped straight up through his neck and throttled his brain.
The very worst poetry of all perished along with its creator, Paula Nancy Millstone Jennings of Greenbridge, Essex, England, in the destruction of the planet Earth.

I very much share the view with the late, great Douglas Adams that there are some very particular offenses that one can perpetrate on the universal device of communication/language, which without exception, result in the phenomenon known as bad poetry… For instance, I am sure that some of my renderings from my early high school days could have competed handily with the ignominious works of the Azgoths of Kria — and just for the record (in case anyone is taking notes), they have all been dispatched in flame…

Day 1: “On Pain”
From Kahlil Gibran’s The Prophet

   Your pain is the breaking of the shell
that encloses your understanding.
   Even as the stone of the fruit must break,
that its heart may stand in the sun, so must
you know pain.
   And could you keep your heart in wonder at the daily
miracles of your life, your pain would not seem less wondrous
than your joy;
   And you would accept the seasons of your heart, even as you have always accepted the seasons that pass over your
fields.
And you would watch with serenity through the winters
of your grief.

••

   Much of your pain is self-chosen.
   It is the bitter potion by which the physician within you
heals your sick self.
   Therefore trust the physician, and drink his remedy in silence
and tranquility:
   For his hand, though heavy and hard, is guided by the
tender hand of the Unseen,
   And the cup he brings, though it burn your lips, has been
fashioned of the clay which the Potter has moistened with
His own sacred tears.

Kahlil Gibran has been and continues to be one of my favorite literary influences. If he had been our contemporary, today’s theorists in psychology might have made him the poster child for the “Highly Sensitive” personality type. To me, he is a timeless and ageless genius, whose wise insights into both the seen and the Unseen have enriched my development as a writer, artist, and “Highly Sensitive” human being. I can’t imagine anyone could read his works, particularly The Prophet, and not come away with something life-changing, every time.

Dreams Depths

Death by Colonoscopy

December 21, 2014May 1, 2017 / stephanielharper / 5 Comments

Gasoline is what it most resembles–
That high-octane concoction for your cleaning
Relies upon the basic fundamentals
Applied to pipes and valves in need of preening.
Like carburetors sputtering to life,
Upon consuming lubricants and fire,
Intestines active with vocations rife
Explode in songs of torrents they inspire!
Though chrome might shine when doused in caustic juices,
And pistons made of steel defy combustion,
Membranes of flesh are known for gentler uses,
Refined for tasks related to digestion!
I dutifully swallowed Satan’s nectar
And rode shit creek without a surge protector!

Sasquatch in Verse…

October 23, 2014April 12, 2024 / stephanielharper / Leave a comment

Squatchspeare in Love

Together we shall scale the tallest trees

to breed among the Redwoods in the rain.

We’ll scrabble up the steepest granite screes

and make our beds in leaves where we have lain.

When hunkering in snow-dens that we share,

with warmth like ours, we won’t need underwear!

I live to contemplate your tawny hair–

its mats arranged exquisitely with care

When I’m out hunting rabbits in the glen,

you stay behind to nest in groves of sage–your musk attracting mobs of other men

whose growls and wood-knocks aggravate my rage!

Your wry smile stained with huckleberry wine

Says, “Take a number, hot stuff, get in line…”

Song of Squatchaway

I’ve followed in your footsteps with great care:

Their prints are not exactly hard to spy,

especially when you leave tufts of hair

in clumps among the trees seven feet high.

A wiry, manly form of brown and black

and musk of eau de skunk and dead raccoon,

I find your silhouette simple to track

through underbrush beneath the silver moon.

If I were human, I would have the clout

to demonstrate I know just what I’m doing!

With photo proof, I would allay all doubt

That you are real–a guy who’s worth pursuing!

But soft! What snapping sound breaks nigh yon crag?

It’s tree-branch-speak for, “Tiny wants a shag!”

SLHARPERPOETRY

Reinventing the Tagline One Existential Crisis at a Time

humor

Painted Chickens

A Human Soul’s Resurrection from Shame

Commode & Consequence

3-DAY-QUOTE CHALLENGE

3-DAY-QUOTE CHALLENGE

Death by Colonoscopy

Sasquatch in Verse…

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3-DAY-QUOTE CHALLENGE

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