Crocodile
Sly for a six-footer you are
a briny guy stretched out & chill
as in literally a cold-blooded
dinosaur with a killer instinct
When the tide flows in your heart slows…
Find out how you can participate here!
writing
My Day 6 Poem for the May 30/30 Challenge is up at Tupelo Press
Vessel
The nature of your need dwells beneath
the earth’s most ancient continental rock…
Find out how you can support my both my challenge, and a fabulous, non-profit, independent literary press HERE
My Day 5 Poem for the 30/30 Challenge is up at Tupelo Press!
Hypochondria Blues
With gratitude to Crow at Words and Feathers for choosing the words, badger, thrombosis, and erectile…
What you’ve got is only a touch of neurosis,
so don’t get your knickers all bunched in a twist—
your worries will give you a deep vein thrombosis!
Do you think there’s a prize for a self-diagnosis? (…)
Learn more about the Tupelo Press 30/30 Project here…
Come join the fun!
My Day 4 Poem for the 30/30 Challenge is up at Tupelo Press!
Because I Said So
With Thanks to Clyde Long for Naming That Title & 3 Words!
It’s been the same, old thing, year after year:
You mope around, all gloomy and convective,
grow turbulent with variable shear…
These interactive challenges have been great fun so far, and extremely helpful and rewarding to me! Please keep ’em coming!
Learn more about the Tupelo Press 30/30 Project here
My Day 3 Poem for the 30/30 Challenge is up at Tupelo Press
Driving with Joe
With thanks to Matthew & Cameren Harper for Naming that Title!
Having risen well before daybreak hitched
the Silver Bullet Airstream to the SUV stashed
the buck knife beneath the driver’s seat & crept…
Learn more about the Tupelo Press 30/30 Project here!
My Day 2 Poem for May is up at Tupelo Press
Sonnet Ending with Two Words from a Willie Nelson Song (Day 2)
With thanks to Robert Okaji
Another death hoax? Gee, how original…
Learn more about this project here
May 2017 Tupelo Press 30/30 Challenge!
I’ve really done it now… Starting today, for the month of May 2017, I will be participating in the Tupelo Press 30/30 Challenge—a program that both raises funds for a non-profit champion of the literary arts, and provides an online platform for poets to showcase their humiliat-er-heroic efforts to take their writing practices to new, poetic heights—which means that I will be relying on a month-long, panic-induced adrenaline surge to compose a new poem each day for 30 days!
But wait…there’s more!
In order to make my poetic endeavors as fruitful and rewarding as possible for all involved (because, face it, I will involve you, one way or the other), and to encourage your generous funding of a cornerstone of literary excellence in the independent publishing industry, Tupelo Press, I hereby offer these valuable incentives for DONATIONS in the following amounts:
$15: Commission a Sonnet! Shall I write of Rainbows? Broccoli? A Colonoscopy? Porcupines? A Holiday or Event? Your wish is my command (as long as it won’t get me arrested)!
$15: Specify 3 words for me to include a poem. If it’s Google-able, it’s fair game!
$15: Name that Title! You provide the title, and I’ll provide its poem in an unspecified format (probably free verse, but it could end up being rhymey and/or metrical). If you can think it up, I’ll give it my best shot to do it justice!
$25: Combo Deal! Choose any two of the three options (Sonnet and Words, Words and Title, or Sonnet and Title).
$35: Best bang for your buck! Combine all three options!
Donate Here , then submit your assignments to me via my email . Your requests will be honored in the order in which they are received.
$Any Amount: Express your support for this worthy cause at your discretion! Your vote of confidence in me (and in the poetic arts) will be of enormous help!
Thank you, Everyone, for your support and enthusiasm as I take on this unprecedented (for me…) challenge!
Let’s make some poetry!
Chartreuse
Sour-apple-flavored candy
The team color of your alma mater’s rival
A jacket that never gets misplaced
The labial-nasal fricative of choice
for cicadas & fire-flies on a summer’s night
The vaguely perturbing chortle
of that quintessentially hip grandma
who reclaimed her youth through Yoga
The tinkle of that crystal bell
you long ago purchased in Prague for a song
An herbal cold remedy’s fizz
Key-lime pie’s tang
The fizz & the tang of a Midori Sour on the rocks
& the fuzzy socks
that of course you wouldn’t be caught dead in
The vinyl stool you still covet in your mother’s kitchen
& the satiny ribbon you once got for honorable mention
In other words
the dessert menu’s less lethal option
for the lactose intolerant on a date
Convection
“/kənˈvekSH(ə)n/ noun: the movement caused within a fluid by the tendency of hotter and therefore less dense material to rise, and colder, denser material to sink under the influence of gravity, which consequently results in transfer of heat.” Google
“In the beginning, when God created the universe, the earth was formless and desolate. The raging ocean that covered everything was engulfed in total darkness, and the Spirit of God was moving over the water. Then God commanded, ‘Let there be light’ (…)” Genesis 1:1-3
If before the beginning something
had not yet appeared from nothing how did
nothing manage to imbibe the god’s breath
that marked the beginning of creation
(particularly since before there was something
there surely wouldn’t have been things
such as gods or breaths)?
For that matter out of what non-thing
was said sudden cloud burped
into the slate gray chaos that hung
in a sky that couldn’t have been there but was
ostensibly sandwiched tidily between
the turbulent blue water (we’ll address that later)
& the gauzier ‘ether’ that was not yet the air
for the deities who were not yet themselves?
& if in the beginning (as the story goes)
those twin neonates formlessness & desolation
comprised everything
that was at the time nothing
from where for the love of sanity
did that ‘raging ocean’ arise?
I mean of the untold passions we might’ve presumed
preceded all extant matter & manner of cognizance
why did we dream up an ocean & infuse it
with fulmination only then to have it (not) be
‘engulfed in total darkness’ as if to deflect
attention from how much we were trying to make
out of a whole bunch of nothing?
Aside from being a bit fishy
the story does lend itself rather poorly
to proper revelation no doubt
amounting to the non-existent body of water in question
being (or more precisely not-being) rightfully fraught
that antiquity could do no better than to liken it—
in its purported (not to mention impossible)
shared subsistence with nothing—
to Phorkys the weedy-bearded progenitor of the gorgons…
Is it any wonder
the artists should depict
so much transference of hot air
as the white wisp of a ship
vanishing in the distant mist?
STEPHANIE L. HARPER
This thought experiment was inspired by the (impressively copious) weather satellite video loops of convection clouds popping into existence, which my son has been tracking down online and sharing with me… just another example of the uncountable, humbling insights into the natural world that I’m sure would have failed to blip on my radar, if not for his beautiful influence.
An earlier version of “Convection” appeared on this blog in Summer 2016.
My Cat is Bread
because what is a purr
but the promise of nourishment realized
in the rhythmic release of the heat
that’s accumulated in pockets
with the rise & fall of her breath?
& what is a bagel
if not a nose meeting the base of a tail
& little pink berry & black currant toes
neatly tucked to sleepy chin
all curled around a heart
that holds no lack?
because basking on my windowsill
in a pretzel of scruff limbs salt-tang
& afternoon-sifted sun she is keenly sweet
like a wheat field’s essence of summer wind
in the last days before the harvest hearty
with the warmth of a freshly-baked marble rye
because whenever i’m away from home
i long for her knowing she’s there ‘kneading’
enough for the both of us (for let’s be honest
no pillowy provender of fleece to grace my bed
has managed to preserve its store-bought virginity
for much more than an hour)
& because although
I realize the time she yet has with me
will be fleeting she will ever remain
the loaf of my life
STEPHANIE L. HARPER
UPDATE: Our sweet Hannah passed away from cancer at age 14 yrs. 5months on Friday, January 27, 2017. She lived with unapologetic grace, generously gave to us of her healing energy, and died with stoic dignity. RIP, beautiful girl…
The house has been empty and strange without her, but my grief is tempered by my gratitude and awe for the magical connection this quirky, smart, territorial, eight-pound (in her heyday), dog-terrorizing wonder of a creature made with her human family. Such is the spiritually-rich and filling nature of the “Bread of Life.”
Hannah, age 14 yrs. 3 mos.
SLHARPERPOETRY 