Photo credit: “Brown” by Robert Okaji
Thank you to editor Tom Zimmerman of The Big Windows Review for selecting “Winter Poem” for publication on The Big Windows’ website and in its upcoming print journal. I’m so pleased my poem has found such a lovely home.
Matthew in the Fountain
August 1999, age 14 months
In the spray’s scattering
of afternoon rays
_____you pass before the sun
a toddling pointed-toe satellite
eclipsing all
but its faint red ghost
Summer haloes you in sun-white down
mottling the concrete’s cool glisten
like a memory from the womb
Watching the world swim into focus
in your smart brown eyes
_____your round cheeks
flushing with the kisses of angels
showering from the sky I realize
in a shutter’s split-second
__________I’ve traversed eternity
My child you burst open my heart like the sun
bursts infinitely open each fountain drop
Happy Mother’s Day! Today, I share this poem encapsulating a life-defining moment for me as a mother, in celebration of motherhood in all its beautiful wisdom, generosity, and complexity in our world.
“Matthew in the Fountain” appears in my debut chapbook collection, This Being Done, and was published in the 2019 Transcendent Zero Press anthology, EPIPHANIES AND LATE REALIZATIONS OF LOVE. Thank you, Dustin Pickering, for selecting this piece.
This is neither a beginning
nor the prophecy of an ending
for beginnings & endings are lies
told to the once-living
it is not the exemplifying
of the aberrations the alchemists made
when they dethroned our Divine Queen
& transmuted her golden honey
into their iron pyrite philosophy
that left us to wither
inside our stunned husks
& so this is the emptying
of our errant devotion
to the denial of bodily hunger
the sanctified unbelieving
in fairytales of heavenly salvation
& it is the vital refilling
of infants’ gaping mouths
with earthly fortitude
& here now is the weeping
for our birth-story interred
with our long-dead mothers
who delivered us
& secured our velvety aboriginal flesh
to their warm breasts—
the saline unleashing
to purify our Logos
our will to creation our innate need
to manifest our god-selves
it is the recovering
of the Life that was severed from our psyches
when it was reduced to a Word
& uttered bereft of melody—
the unrepressed singing
Artemis awake from her slumber
beneath her ruined Temple in Ephesus
at last this is the extricating
of shame that made our tongues
untie us from our Mother’s holy earth
& swayed our ears to scorn her winged songs
even as she kept flying back to us
ever thick-limbed & fragrant
with nourishment from lavender blooms
solely that we should swell in our birthing cells
gorged on her royal jelly
This poem is my body
embryonic translucent
distended with new hope
it is my luminous black eyes
grown huge with their memory
of who I am
I’m thinking a lot today about the Divine Mother’s tireless devotion to her children. Happy Mother’s Day!
“Prologue to My Birth” was published in the collection, International Poetry Month 2017, curated by Bonnie McClellan, and appears in my chapbook, This Being Done, available now for order from Finishing Line Press, scheduled to ship in June 2018.
(Recorded by Matthew Harper, April 17, 2018)
Inspired by my beautiful son (who’ll be turning 20 years old in June!), “Matthew in the Fountain” appears in my new chapbook, This Being Done — a culmination of years of work, and featuring Matthew’s gorgeous photo (below) on the cover — available for preorder purchase NOW and for the next 10 days from Finishing Line Press:
This Being Done, by Stephanie L. Harper
This Being Done is scheduled for June 2018 release, but please consider ordering your copy before the April 27, 2018 preorder deadline, as my print-run will depend on the number of copies ordered during the preorder sales period. Your timely support will be crucial to my book’s successful release, and means more to me than I could ever hope to express!
Cameren at age 4, taken Mother’s Day 2005
Apologize? For regretting your birth?
That the white dove of sarcasm
has officially fledged from your belly
alit on the canopy & uncaged its crystal trill
comes to me as no surprise
But neither of us could have foreseen the power
your brooding would conceive of pencil & ire
before the moment you spat out crumpled & hand delivered
my saltwater baptism
Your own tears now dried for hours blaze for me
from the gold heart in your gray-green eyes
willing my belief that you truly didn’t realize
I’ve been there your whole life
At sundown I’m the one always stumbling through the wood
like some sort of village idiot brandishing my dim lantern
at the giant pines as if I might catch them in the act
of uprooting themselves & slinking away
Though you flit by & vanish into the trees
in a flash I can barely make out as a memory
your trace among the cedars & silvertips remains as innate in me
as the wolf’s way to her newborn cub’s whimper
Two months early
yet already ripe for the triumph
& pain only the fiercest have dared to carry in one body
you were born to fly from me—
& so how could I ever be sorry
to know of finding you over & over again?
Thank you to editor Eli T. Mond for giving this piece a home in the December 2017 edition of The Ibis Head Review.
“In Response to My 13 Year-Old Daughter’s Letter” is included in my debut poetry chapbook, This Being Done, which is available for order NOW from Finishing Line Press!
If you would like to order a copy, I ask that you please do so as soon as possible before the deadline for pre-publication orders on April 27, 2018. Although my book is scheduled for release in June, the print-run is based on a minimum quota of copies ordered during the two-month presale period ending on April 27, 2018.
Order online: This Being Done, by Stephanie L. Harper
I’d like to express my heartfelt gratitude to any of you who have already preordered This Being Done. Your investment in and appreciation for who I am and what I do means more to me than I could ever adequately express. This journey wouldn’t be the same without your support!
SLHARPERPOETRY 