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.
Remains the Dark
“How I wanted to be that sky—” ~ Ocean Vuong
What is want, if not the forsaken
self’s inexorable reversion to self?
Just as your virtual arrival at the event
horizon must propagate only departure
this eternal leaving you actually are
is the mouth’s forgotten swallow,
is sustenance un-sought,
is your every trace & its antithesis
at once ceasing to mean.
Though emptied, you are no less
unfathomable: the black belly remains
the dark you’ll never grasp how to be.
“Remains the Dark” was published in the Spring 2019 Showcase at The Zen Space, among a gorgeous collection of poetry, along with haiku and *tiny poems* by Lynne Burnett, the late Ron Evans (curated by Robert Okaji), and others, expertly edited by and adorned with the original black and white photography of the brilliant Daniel Paul Marshall.
Rhapsody in Bone
Beneath the frozen fathoms of the sea,
a maiden’s body swells in rhapsody;
her father made her sustenance for fish
and creatures yet unseen by human eyes,
who feed until the carrion is spent.
The maiden’s bones roll over with the tide,
entwined with deep-sea coral colonies,
and where her eyes were, now are dwellings kept
by denizens who have no need of light
beneath the frozen fathoms of the sea.
Though water’s currents quell the dolphins’ calls,
the doleful cries her fecund corpse intones
uncoil the sodden hearts of others’ souls,
while hers, forsaken, flounders in the dark.
A maiden’s body belts a rhapsody,
because her father threw her from a cliff:
butt-hurt that she’d flat-out refused to stroke
his ego (teeny-peeny sack, he was,
of whims that changed as often as the winds),
her father made her sustenance for fish,
yet could not stop his daughter’s sunken bones
from breathing sirens’ cantos on the waves
and luring hunters to her icy grave—
that home to lonely spirits of the depths
and creatures yet unseen by human eyes!
A hunter plunks his line into the sea,
where deep below, a bony treasury
still bears the stench of murder’s milky dregs,
a tangy lunch for urchins clinging fast,
who feed until the carrion is spent.
Upon the swaying surf the hunter waits
with hero’s grit,’til suddenly, a lurch—
he’s hooked the skeleton woman’s rib! This catch
has heft suggesting banquets fit for kings,
who feed until the carrion is spent!
Oy veh! He hoists her bones onto his skiff
and shits his britches fearing he’s been cursed
by Death, herself, arisen from the depths—
her salt-worn bones a host for writhing eels,
and creatures yet unseen by human eyes!
Try as he may to toss her back, he finds
her long front teeth affixed—and can’t deny
this woman he’s revived deserves to live:
those naked, tangled limbs, her smooth, bald head…
Her father made her sustenance for fish,
yet could not stop his daughter’s sunken bones
from going viral with their exposés—
though water tries to quash the dolphins’ calls—
for songs of fuckhead fathers make us sick,
when maidens’ bodies swell in rhapsody!
Though many hunters know the songs of bones,
scarce few boast true cajones, fewer still
behold the face of Death with steadfast gaze,
and grow to love and keep all she became
beneath the frozen fathoms of the sea.
“Rhapsody in Bone” was first published in May 2017, in editor Nate Ragolia’s awesome journal, Boned: A Collection of Skeletal Writings, and was subsequently included in my chapbook, This Being Done.
Hypochondria Blues
What you’ve got is only a touch of neurosis,
so don’t get your knickers all bunched in a twist—
such worries can give you a deep vein thrombosis!
Do you think there’s a prize for a self-diagnosis?
Stop looking for lesions; don’t palpate that cyst!
What you’re dealing with here’s just a bit of neurosis…
That smartphone is gonna cause spinal stenosis!
The search engine’s warning that if you persist,
you’ll likely wind up with a deep vein thrombosis!
You’d have known it by now if you had halitosis—
like a boil, it’s not something easily missed.
Better face it, you’ve got a small case of neurosis…
Now, what would possess you to google psychosis?
Let me guess… The voices submitted a list?
Are they helping you summon a deep vein thrombosis?
It’s not a news flash you’ve got some type of –osis—
but the poking of badgers is what gets them pissed…
So give it a rest! Embrace your neurosis!
Who needs all the fuss of a deep vein thrombosis?
(Just to be on the safe side, look up pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis…)
“Hypochondria Blues” was published in the anthology, The Larger Geometry, by peaceCENTERbooks. Thank you to editor d ellis phelps for including my work in this beautiful and inspired collection!
The peaceCENTER, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization in San Antonio, Texas, supports the learning of peace through prayer and education; and supports the demonstration of peace through nonviolent actions and community. All proceeds from the sale of this anthology go to benefit the peaceCENTER.
Cephalopod
I know how you tried to befuddle me
with that ten-legged head of yours—
how you thought you’d streak by
& ink me blind, but I see
how it is: I mean, once your penetrating-
obsidian eyes shone the ocean alive,
that cute little stunt of tucking back
your longest tentacles, as if you could
pass for being one of the girls, almost
like innocuous, trifling, bipedal me,
was glaringly obvious. I know your beak
was really poised from the start to strike—
to take my breath into your breath,
& crack open my sternum, & feast
on the still-thudding muscle inside me—
because motoring between my mere
two legs, primed to be torpedoed
with your mantle, until I tauten
like a caecum gorged on tiger prawns,
is the same jet-propulsion as yours
worked in reverse…
“Cephalopod” recently languished on a short list for an inordinate amount of time — poor guy — before ultimately being rejected, so I’ve just decided to share him!
My poem, “Psychedelic,” is enjoying some lovely company during this week’s installment of Poetry Wednesday at Prometheus Dreaming! Thank you to editor David van den Berg for selecting this piece.
Pressing into the Depths
of an old-growth oak grove on your search for virgin peat having naturally preemptively considered the human calcaneus poised on its subcutaneous fat pad (the sturdy lovechild as it were of evolution & bipedal ambulation); you go whole-soled knowing nature engenders no freaks & that the point of weight-bearing actually is to sink-spring to life your very own rooted upward mobility—to elapse your mossy quiet’s once upon a time into cantilevered boom to mushroom & split your bark like a seething green superhero (who leaves you in tatters) harden yourself new gnarls to gather lichens & ever after phosphoresce the midnight fog like a moonbeam striking your cast-off glass slipper
“Pressing into the Depths” was published in the November 2018 peaceCenterbooks anthology, The Larger Geometry: poems for peace, edited by d ellis phelps.
Now is not the time
for my fettered titanium lines—
no time for me to claim
I know a thing or two about life
as if I were anyone’s keeper…
A “suicidally depressed” convict doing life for murder
petitioned my psychotherapist friend to treat him:
& so it was that with all the detached generosity
a wife & mother of three could muster she rendered
a diagnosis of anti-social personality disorder
even as his icy eyes ignited in her a germ of lust
that razed every trace of her in a sudden flush
Now is really not the time for idle moralizing
about prisoners or locks & keys as if
there were any kind of justice in poetry
It’s not the time for tying up loose ends
saving pennies for rainy days or chrysalizing
our wrinkly little walnut meats to pupate belief
in the virtue of counting the hours
Now the dragon is awake
blinking in the daylight of withering dreams
wagging her head in a gnashing rage
“Imprisoned” was first published in issue IV of Claudius Speaks in October 2017, and is included in my chapbook, This Being Done, released on July 6, 2018, and now available on Amazon.
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!
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
“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!
SLHARPERPOETRY 