Monthly Archives: October 2018

Scarecrow Sings the High Lonesome

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Scarecrow3

 

Scarecrow Sings the High Lonesome

Nothing about me shines or sparkles. If asked,
I would place myself among the discarded —
remnant cloth and straw, worn, inedible,
useless, if not for packaging intended to
convey a certain message, which I of course
have subverted to “Welcome, corvids!” Even
my voice lies stranded in the refuse, silent
yet harmonious, clear yet strangled, whole
and unheard, dispersed, like tiny drops of
vapor listing above the ocean’s swell, enduring
gray skies and gulls and those solemn rocks
bearing their weight against the white crush.
Why do I persist? What tethers a shadow
to its body? How do we hear by implication
what isn’t there? Bill Monroe hammered
his mandolin, chopping chords, muting,
droning, banging out incomplete minors
to expectant ears, constructing more than
a ladder of notes climbing past the rafters
into the smoky sky. What I sing is not
heard but implied: the high lonesome, blue
and old-time, repealed. Crushed limestone
underfoot. Stolen names, borrowed sounds.
Dark words subsumed by light, yellowed,
whitened, faded to obscurity, to obscenity.

“Scarecrow Sings the High Lonesome” first appeared in Crannóg, in June 2017.

Sunday, June

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Sunday, June

Trying to give, I fail too often.
But this day we prepare for you
food that your beloved often cooked,
made with the ingredients of 19,000
nights and promises of more to come.
These potatoes. That beef, the fruit.
Simple, and yet so difficult to reproduce.
Even the recipe is incomplete. “Some
mayonnaise,” it says, then “mustard,”
but not whether dry or prepared, and
the amount is unclear. Yet the results
transport you to stronger days, to
the clear-eyed self and limitless
possibilities, meals on the table
at five o’clock, the satisfaction of work
well done, knowing that you have soared
above your father’s imprecations
but never beyond love’s touch, her
sleepy murmurs, morning coffee,
burnished histories and late cigarettes,
the tulips on the soil you’ll soon share.

“Sunday, June” first appeared in the print journal Nourish in March 2018.

Drawer of Possibilities

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Drawer of Possibilities

In the drawer of possibilities
you find stasis, the lure of the unknown.
To what should this hinged orb
be subservient? Or that wrinkled blade?
An egg, the bald potato. The sacrificial
carrot? To everything its purpose.
Like that light in the crook of the
altered frame, attracting the winged
beings. You, of course, serve nothing.

“Drawer of Possibilities” appeared in The New Reader in March 2018.

Dictionary of Dreams

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Dictionary of Dreams

You do not know their secret names.
Mine is the music of metal and wood.

Human voices behind walls.
Trapped in reds, in chiseled words.

And silence. Always silence.
Or the filtered woodwinds at dawn.

How to describe her body?
The quickness of night. Year’s demise.

A family of ghosts hidden in these halls.

“Dictionary of Dreams” was published in Kingdoms in the Wild in April 2018.

The Death’s-Head’s Testament

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Stephanie L. Harper has another chapbook coming out – in March! It’s available at a substantial discount for a limited time only. I read the manuscript and was stunned. You deserve this book. Get it now!

SLHARPERPOETRY

Announcing my newest poetry chapbook:

Cvr_Death'sHead_Ad (1)

Hello My Poetry-Loving WordPress Friends!

Here’s the scoop: Main Street Rag has opened advanced sales at $6.50 per copy for my newest poetry chapbook, The Death’s-Head’s Testament,scheduled for release in March 2019! This generous discount off of the $12.00 cover price will be offered for a limited time, so be sure to take advantage of it soon!

ORDER HERE!

Thank you so much, everyone, for your engagement with and support of my work! I couldn’t have come this far without you!

Once, again, credit for this breathtaking cover photo goes to my son, Matthew Harper.

Thank you, also, to editor M. Scott Douglas at Main Street Rag for a terrific design!

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Every Drop

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Every Drop

Your light singes my roots
even deep underground, where
worms revel in your joy

and all the days’ secrets line up
awaiting their turn to kneel and
unwrap their daily truths in the
comfort of the chambered soil.

If I were a seed, I would wait
for your touch before sprouting,
and only then would I surge

to the surface, swallowing
your gift. Greedy but grateful,
I’d open, drink every drop.

Letter to Harper from Halfway to the Horizon

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Letter to Harper from Halfway to the Horizon

 

Dear Stephanie: No one connects here, and no matter
how resolutely we trudge forward, ignoring spinal fusions
and attacking hearts, the line skips lightly ahead, mocking us,
I think, in that way only the ineffable may claim. Looking
out, I see a lone wren, clouds filtering the stars, and strands
of barbed wire looped like question marks around cedar
stumps, punctuating the day’s greeting. No answers there,
only more inquiries blanching under the sun. But this
is my febrile landscape, not your lush green headed by
gray. Nothing matters, or, everything’s imperative.
In this gnarled season I can’t tell which, although
the vulture ripping into a squirrel carcass on my
suburban front lawn tells me something ain’t quite
right. Full or empty, the glass is still a glass, despite
my propensity for seeking more, whether cava or beer
or yes, enlightenment. I fear this reveals too much
about me, and wonder if I should draw the shade or
keep tugging it higher, admitting more light. Have you
ever noticed that half often amounts to less the closer
you get to it, each portion diminishing, divided by two,
and again, until only a thin shadow vaguely resembling
the original shape remains? Perhaps this is how we’re
meant to exit as failures on this field. The horizon’s
still there, red stroking green, clouds feathering in,
and maybe if we keep walking we’ll reach it in a sunburst
of doves and glittering red dahlias. Yeah, right. In the
meantime, let’s multiply our losses and sculpt another
morning truer than its source, stronger than its media. Our
optimism has already blown this joint. What else have we
got to lose? I remain, as ever, yours in insolence, Bob.

 

Originally penned in January 2017, “Letter to Harper from Halfway to the Horizon” was published in MockingHeart Review in May 2018. I’m reading with MockingHeart founder and editor-in-chief Clare L. Martin, along with Bessie Senette, at 7:00 this evening, October 20, at Malvern Books in Austin. Come on by, if you’re able!

Robert Okaji (Chapbook Confessions #3)

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Wherein I confess…

Underfoot Poetry

Chapbook Confessions is a series in which poets discuss, at length, the writing of their most recent collection of poems, in whatever way they desire. For more information on the series, go here.

Below, Robert Okaji writes on his 2017 collection From Every Moment a Second.

 Chapbook Confession, or, How to Write Chapbooks without Knowing How

81JPWewW4yLI confess that I’ve never intentionally written a chapbook, that I’m too scatter-brained to plan one. Instead, I write individual poems, and after a suitable stack has accumulated, attempt to force them to comingle, however reluctantly, hoping to form a semi-cohesive collection for someone’s reading pleasure (or dismay, as the case may be). This is not to say that the occasional series of poems never escapes my subconscious, but I never deliberately set out to write a certain number of poems with the intention of publishing them as a discrete entity…

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This Island is a Stone

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This Island Is a Stone

Raking the sand, I leave only the infinite
trickling behind; our first bed bore your

parents’ memories. This one grows weeds. The
heavenly bamboo (a shrub and not a grass)

issues white petals and inedible red fruit. My
fingertip callouses have softened from disuse;

coyotes no longer answer my yips and howls.
Who replies to liars anyway? A snail’s love

dart impales the object of its affection, but
often inconveniently. This is not a metaphor

for bad sex, but a means of transferring an
allohormone. Today the overburdened creeks

erode their banks and 492 seconds after
departing the sun a ray greets my lawn. I snap

the towel at the fly on the door, but miss
again. The once sacred now lies open and

emptied; a few months ago my father could not
remember my birthdate although he recognized

the season. Some totals may never satisfy.
If I collect my life’s accumulated wastings, will

that sum temper me or merely accentuate the
fool? Nothing is as it seems. We mark our

remaining days with unread books. These
waves are plotted creases, this island is a stone.

“This Island Is a Stone” was published in MockingHeart Review in September 2017. I am grateful to editor Clare L. Martin for publishing this piece. As luck has it, I’m reading with Clare and Bessie Senette on Saturday, October 20, at 7:00 p.m. at Malvern Books in Austin.