A Word Bathing in Moonlight
You understand solitude,
the function of water,
how stones breathe
and the unbearable weight
of love. Give up, the voice says.
Trust only yourself.
Wrapped in light, you
turn outward. Burst forth.
“A Word Bathing in Moonlight” first appeared in Eclectica in July 2017.
“Thinking Music” Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
Moonwalker
The night’s face, pocked with stars.
In the stellar wind, we soar.
From this pale light,
acknowledge insignificance, watch
the blue spinning so far away, so close.
I am that finite point
of nowhere, of nothing, wondering
when the sun will truly darken,
if I will see tomorrow, today.
* * *
“Moonwalker” first appeared in Ligeia’s Winter 2019 edition. Many thanks to poetry editor Ashley Wagner for taking this poem.
A Word is Not a Home
A word is not a home
but we set our tables
between its walls,
cook meals, annoy
friends, abuse ourselves.
Sometimes I misplace
one, and can’t find
my house, much less
the window’s desk
or the chair behind it.
But if I wait, something
always takes form in the fog,
an arm, a ribcage, a feathered
hope struggling to emerge.
Inept, I take comfort
in these apparitions,
accept their offerings,
lose myself in mystery,
find shelter there
in the hollowed curves.
I’m so proud to report that Stephanie L. Harper was chosen as a finalist by Mark Doty (!) for the Red Wheelbarrow Poetry Prize. Over 1800 poems were submitted by 622 writers. Three prize winners and five finalists were named. She’s too modest to brag about this, but that’s what I’m here for!
The Most Intimate
How that blue turns gray over green
at a slight tilt of the chin,
and even upside down
anchors the tree.
Some constellations escape language,
stars looming without nouns and adverbs,
the utterances of the planets
caught in the gravity
of their own situations.
Laugh, but the trashcan is full. The lawn is brown.
There are no gods.
Unadorned statements abound.
Even this sky may shift again,
the most intimate twist
turned full.
* * *
“The Most Intimate” first appeared at Poetry Breakfast in May 2019. Thank you, Ann Kestner, for taking this piece.
Feeling Squeezed at the Grocery Store I Conclude that the Propensity to Ignore Pain is Not Necessarily Virtuous, but Continue Shopping and Gather the Ingredients for Ham Fried Rice because That’s What I Cook When My Wife is Out-of-Town and I’m Not in the Mood for Italian, and Dammit I’m Not Ill, Merely a Little Inconvenienced, and Hey, in the 70’s I Played Football in Texas, and When the Going Gets Tough…
I answer work email in the checkout line. Drive home, take two aspirin.
Place perishables in refrigerator. Consider collapsing in bed. Call wife.
Let in dog. Drive to ER, park. Provide phone numbers. Inhale. Exhale.
Repeat. Accept fate and morphine. Ask for lights and sirens, imagine the
seas parting. On the table, consider fissures and cold air, windows and
hagfish. Calculate arm-length, distance and time. Expect one insertion,
receive another. Dissonance in perception, in reality. Turn head when
asked. Try reciting Kinnell’s “The Bear.” Try again, silently this time.
Give up. Attempt “Ozymandias.” Think of dark highways. Wonder about
the femoral, when and how they’ll remove my jeans. Shiver uncontrollably.
The events in this poem took place more than eight years ago. A lifetime ago.
Magic
You give me nothing to hold, and for this
are blessed. Devotion
is a mirror and breath, one
solid and illusory, the other
needed yet expelled, taken, dispersed.
Which begs another question
not relying on tricks.
“Who traces names on the sheets?” you ask.
I roll up my sleeves and say “Words
conceal what the glass cannot.”
Source becomes deed, becomes habit.
In your hand a stone, a dove, the unbroken ring.
* * *
“Magic” is included in my chapbook, From Every Moment a Second, and was first published in Taos Journal of International Poetry and Art.
Pain
Pain reminds me that I’m breathing, still able to appreciate the fragrance of French roast coffee brewing, the diced red pepper, onion and jalapeño mixture sizzling in the pan. Today is a good day. When I roll out the dough for the onion tart, the leg barely protests, and as I sip ginger tea while the tart bakes, no throb interrupts my pleasure.
Sometimes the hip shocks me with its barbed lance attack, or the knee rasps “not today, sonny,” and I grimace, concentrate on deliberate forward movement, one short step followed by another, into the kitchen or down the steps to the shack.
Music soothes, as does poetry, but occasionally the weight of the guitar is more than the leg can bear. Still, when I manage to lose myself in a tune or a few phrases, I drift in their currents, weightless, free.
Oh, to climb that hill
among those lost maples
Look — my shoe’s untied
* * *
“Pain” first appeared in The Zen Space in July 2018.
You Say Cicada, Which Shrivels My Ears
I say cicada, the difference lurking in the middle,
like the shortest dancer in an off-Broadway musical,
or a note hidden between two reams of legal paper
in the supply room of a well-appointed dentist’s
office, where you find yourself, by accident, searching
for the exit. But think how our sap-sucking friend must
feel, a foot underground, during its final instar phase,
reversing course, leaving behind the darkness
and moist roots, burrowing up through the soil
toward light and the shrug into maturity. And after
that, squeezing through a crack in what had been
itself, emerging, soft and vulnerable, slouching to the
inevitable call. I think of ecdysis, how we, too, shed
ourselves, leaving behind remnants, old skin and
armor, and rising, on occasion, wiser, softer, more
complete. But sometimes we try to reenter those
discarded shells. My acquaintance searches through
the past for bits of himself, purchases toys – marbles,
pocket knives – stitching together a semblance of the
old comfort. He keeps, in one jar, three teeth from his
childhood, in another the exuviae of a half-dozen
scorpions. How delightful it would be, he says, to
abandon your hardened self and become someone
new. He looks to the ground. I nod, and whisper.
“You Say Cicada, Which Shrivels My Ears,” appeared in the inaugural issue of Claw & Blossom, in July 2019. The poem was originally written during the August 2016 30-30 challenge. I’m grateful to Sunshine Jansen, who sponsored the poem and provided three words to be included in the piece: instar, ecdysis, and sap-sucking. Thank you, as well, to editor C.B. Auder for accepting the poem.
My poem “Scarecrow Wonders” is live at Issue 49 of Tipton Poetry Journal. Many thanks to the editors for taking this piece.
O at the Edges 