In Response to My 13 Year-Old Daughter’s Letter

April 9, 2018April 9, 2018 / stephanielharper / 16 Comments

Cameren at age 4, taken Mother’s Day 2005

In Response to My 13 Year-Old Daughter’s Letter

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?

STEPHANIE L. HARPER

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!

Q&A with Poet Stephanie L. Harper (Part 1)

March 29, 2018March 29, 2018 / stephanielharper / 3 Comments

Thanks for this terrific honor, Bob!

O at the Edges

I’m pleased to offer this Q&A with poet Stephanie L. Harper:

You have a chapbook, This Being Done, coming out soon. Can you tell us something about it? From where did the title come?

Yes, I’m thrilled that this debut of my work in book form is making its way into the world. The title, This Being Done, is an excerpt from my poem, “An Elegy for Birds & Bees,” which, the more I think about it, the more I believe is the crux of the collection. The poem came to me when I was profoundly depressed and drifting—feeling as if my childbearing days being behind me was somehow synonymous with not having (and not deserving to have) an identity or purpose for my own sake. The poem’s opening lines, “over & over in habitual drone /i repeat a phrase in my mind that no one knows i say…

View original post 1,273 more words

Alabaster

March 9, 2018March 9, 2018 / stephanielharper / 52 Comments

Alabaster

I am a pink rose petal’s pale glow

black ash tamped in furrows
between the breaths of the living
& the droning 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

STEPHANIE L. HARPER

“Alabaster,” having first appeared in print in Sixfold magazine, winter 2014, is included in my new chapbook, This Being Done,

available now at Finishing Line Press until April 27, 2018, for pre-publication order. The number of orders received during this period will determine the print-run scheduled for release on June 22, 2018. I’m grateful for your timely orders to help my work take flight! RESERVE YOUR COPY HERE TODAY!

My new chapbook is now available!

February 26, 2018 / stephanielharper / 10 Comments

It’s officially official! My debut poetry collection, This Being Done, is now available for prepublication order! RESERVE YOUR COPY HERE: Finishing Line Press!

Beesiness As Usual_Matthew Harper

Thank you to my son, Matthew Harper, for contributing his gorgeous photograph, “Beesiness as Usual” for use on the cover of THIS BEING DONE. According to the timeline I received from Finishing Line Press, the graphic designer should have my cover design completed sometime this week! I’ll be sharing it here as soon as it’s ready!

I’m so grateful to my WordPress Poetry Posse for your interest in, enthusiasm for, and support of my work! I can’t emphasize enough the difference you make in my life as a poet, artist, and human being, in general.

I must also give a shout-out to poet and human extraordinaire, Robert Okaji, whose guidance has been instrumental in this venture. Thank you, Bob, for sharing your many talents with our community, and for your wisdom, humility, and generosity of spirit that so enrich my life, and the lives of countless others!

Lupercalia

February 20, 2018 / stephanielharper / 3 Comments

Lupercalia

We probe into the distant wintry
rest of white oaks & umbrella pines

moonlit with longing to thrill
in the feral hesitant glints

that crack the black tourmaline cold
our eyes pursuing their penumbrae

until the brink of blindness reaching
for our bloodline of lost

infidel selves still bound
to the night’s crystalline tenors

As our illicit newborn brothers were
abandoned to the Tiber & delivered

keening for milk to their mongrel lives
we too were borne by a savage river

to a mother waiting on the Palatine shore

Capitoline Wolf

“Lupercalia” appears in my chapbook, This Being Done, which will be available for pre-sale purchase at Finishing Line Press, starting next week! Stay tuned for more announcements, including the order link on the Finishing Line Press website as soon as it goes live!