My new crown of Covid-19 sonnets, A Crown Most Unroyal, is today’s poetry feature at Vox Populi. I’m deeply grateful to Editor Michael Simms for his enthusiasm, support, and vision in brilliantly pairing my poems with Thom Hartmann’s essay on the “GOP death cult” and enhancing the “legitimacy” of our contributions to the “political discourse.”
I wish you all safety, sanity, and every possibility for joy as we continue to plod through…
I’m pleased to share that my poem “I Unstop Myself”is now live at Monstering Magazine. Thank you to editor Kristen Tollan for selecting my little tribute to Walt Whitman’s Song of Myself for publication alongside so many other inspiring women/women identifying voices.
My poems, “Missive (to the White Oak’s Depths)” and “Elegy for My Former Self,” are live in the July 2021 issue of Cathexis Northwest Press. Heartfelt thanks to editor C. M. Tollefson for selecting these pieces.
Please also enjoy the audio renditions of these poems, courtesy of—your favorite poet and mine—the one and only Robert Okaji!
I’m so pleased to share my poem, “On Domestic Life & Other Stories of Carnage,” inspired by a certain maker of mischief, which is now live in issue 48 of Neologism Poetry Journal! Thank you EIC Christopher Fields for selecting this piece and for being an absolute professional and pleasure to work with!
Hope Springs Eternal & So Does Willie Nelson
Posted in honor of his 88th birthday!
Another death hoax? Gee, how original…
You folks ain’t fickle—guess I’ll give ya points
fer grit if not fer gumption. I’ve rolled joints
my friends, far stiffer than my tricky ankle,
imbibed red wine that’s older than yer gran’;
this here bandana holds more DNA
than most small countries on a holiday,
so keep your Internet! Just leave the bedpan
close, gas up the bus, & brace for twenty
more long years—well, give or take a decade.
The road’s a callin’, songs are in my head,
& my ol’ guitar plays as good as any;
there’s plenty weed to smoke & hair to braid:
So’s far as I can tell, I’m still not dead.
In celebration of World Poetry Day, I offer the following “syntactic echo” of the ineffably ingenious innovator of American Poetry, Walt Whitman. This poetic exercise was the brainchild of one Alessandra Lynch (i.e., I’m not entirely to blame…), instructor/facilitator of my spring 2021 Poetry Workshop in the Butler University MFA Program.
Of These and All
“And of these one and all I weave the song of myself” ~ Walt Whitman, Song of myself 15
The left flesh-melon harbors a pool of sweat, the right flesh-melon harbors a
pool of sweat,
The perimenopausal woman hot-flashes in the kitchen, the bemused son dons
wool slippers in the kitchen,
The second husband purchases electric socks for his perimenopausal wife and
the ex-husband dissociates further from his ex-wife;
And these stoke my hankerings for donuts, and I make do with home-baked
banana-nut muffins,
And such as it is to amass five decades of knowledge, minus where I last left my phone,
more or less I am in fact speaking on it,
And of these hot flashes, cantankerous joints, suddenly-uncloseable pants and all I
justify the lament of my middle-age…
Thanks for spreading the word, Bob! Slippery Elm LJ is truly top-notch!
Slippery Elm Literary Journal’s 2019 issue is now live in the Slippery Elm online archives. My poem “This Oak” appeared in the print issue. If you have a chance, take a look at SELJ‘s offerings and/or consider submitting a few poems or entering the 2021 Slippery Elm Prize competition, now open for submissions. Many thanks to the journal’s editorial team, and especially EIC Dave Essinger, whose professionalism and personal kindness place SELJ at the top of the ladder in the world of literary journals.
“Woolly Howl” by Cameren Harper
My poem “Awakening” is now live in issue 17 of the fabulous online journal, Panoply! I’m immensely grateful to editors Jeff Santosuosso, Andrea Walker, and Ryn Holmes for selecting this piece, and for their passion and impeccable professionalism as promoters of poetry and Poet-kind!
Though it is Written
that grace comes only by the way
of a primordial breath,
you know it to be no less
manifest for its taking of alternate routes,
as surely it finds you by the grasping-
of-an-implement way;
by the miraculous-
proximity-of-your-notebook-
with-Munch’s-iconic-Scream-
embossed-in-gold-on-the-cover-
to-your-waiting-for-this-morning’s-
nine-grained-slice-to-toast way;
as well as the letting-
your-hand-part-the-pages-
with-a-wake-of-coffee-stains-
because-you-opt-today-
to-imbibe-your-reflux-inducing-libation-
over-not-doing-so’s-throbbing-promise-
of-a-4:00-pm-migraine way;
not to mention the way
you habitually open
the blinds to another barely-lit dawn,
that grants you a glimpse of a Northern Flicker
scrabbling for purchase on the finch feeder
in a flapping blaze of belly, feathers,
& beaked seeds flung in ceremonious
presumption of some nearby female’s interest;
or the way you finally steal a breath—
which you need to steal
before your face re-stones itself
in the memory of those children
who were murdered
in yesterday’s mass shooting
in a Texas church,
for how else can you still hope?—
which delivers you to the way
your twelve-year-old Red Heeler
recruits what measure of her
brown-eyed vigilance she can muster
to shepherd this whole
bed-headed-faux-cheetah-printed-
heartsick-kitchen-calamity of you
past the counter-top-mounds of clutter,
through the ice age shadow
of your perdition,
& back to your beginning
when you were god,
& you were the word with god,
& you were the way.
“Though it is Written” first appeared (in slightly different form) in The Winnow Magazine in November 2019. When I first wrote this piece, I couldn’t imagine a more agonizing circumstance than that which had brought about the particular tragedy weighing so heavily on me at the time. Then came the year 2020. Though I haven’t yet processed some of the things we’ve collectively experienced and emerged from (with varying degrees of scarring) enough to approach them poetically, what I do know is that the way I once devised for myself to keep finding hope still applies.
Happy New Year 2021, my friends. I wish you all the ways that guide you in the year ahead to soul-sustaining beauty, light, and love.
Thank you to Editor in Chief Nadia Gerassimenko for nominating my poem “Risen” for a Pushcart Prize and including it in her tour de force (and fun and interactive!) compilation of poetry, short prose, visual art, and other mixed-media creations that is issue 7 of Moonchild Magazine!
View in landscape on a tablet or computer screen to appreciate the full experience.
SLHARPERPOETRY 