My poem “Home: Living Between” is up at Allegro Poetry Magazine. Scroll down to read it. Thank you, Sally Long, for taking this poem.
Poem Up at Allegro Poetry Magazine
4
Tag Archives: poems
What a Patriot Dreams
I confess that I’ve ordered multiple copies of this book, because I know I’ll give some away. And the pre-publication sale price of $6.50 is nearly 50% off!
What a Patriot Dreams
I saw the flags come down—
their masts falling like the trees
flattened by shockwaves
in those clips of old footage
from military nuclear bomb tests,
spliced into high school history documentaries.
They weren’t projected celluloid etchings
that teenagers confined to plastic chairs
could summarily cancel
with one hand motioning No
in the universal vernacular…
Caught in a wash of floodlights
on the indigo summer dusk,
the red-white-blue swaths crushed
in on themselves like torn parachutes,
& all vanished at once—deposed
by morning’s first, grainy insinuations
that breached the blinds’ periphery,
& accreted into a single, silent force
creeping along my bedroom walls,
as if to thwart illumination:
In this country of my own
birth & citizenship, I’ve, in turn,
given birth to two, precious children—
my riven heart’s two halves now trussed
in a spectacular fiasco of feathers & wax.
STEPHANIE L. HARPER
“What a…
View original post 107 more words
Poem Up at Thirteen Myna Birds
My odd poem “No Rain Will Fall” is up at Thirteen Myna Birds. Scroll down to read it. Thank you, Juliet Cook, for taking this poem.
Self-Portrait with Orbit
Self-Portrait with Orbit
An arced path around a central point, bound to but held apart,
as in night’s returning grace, or standing waves.
In periapsis, you reach out as I slowly withdraw.
Gravity does not prevent departure but prolongs it.
The acceleration of a body is equal to the sum of the gravitational forces,
divided by its mass. I rise from the chair but can’t escape.
Not circular but elliptical.
Where falling away and curving from never meet.
Realizing that I am neither focus nor center, I discover place
in symmetry, in flow and subtraction.
A cloud obscures the sun and you close your eyes.
I wither at the thought of scaling or relative size, or your departure.
In the simplest Klemperer rosette, four bodies cycle their dances,
heavy, light, heavy, light, in a rhombic configuration.
My arteries fill in opposition to desire.
Wanting you, I absolve weight and listen, accept my place.
“Self-Portrait with Orbit” last appeared on the blog in October 2017, and is included in The Circumference of Other, my offering in the Silver Birch Press publication, IDES: A Collection of Poetry Chapbooks, available on Amazon.
Self-Portrait as Compost
Self-Portrait as Compost
Beneath the surface find warmth,
the fruit of decay and mastication,
of layered mixes and intermingled
juices. Disintegrated or whole,
still I strive to speak. Bits of me
meld, to be absorbed slowly; I
process and am processed: here,
within the pepper bush’s deep red
berries, there among the dianthus.
Scattered, deliberately placed,
having been, I shall emerge again,
forever changed, limitless, renewed.
* * *
“Self-Portrait as Compost” was first published in Issue 125 of Right Hand Pointing. Thank you to editors Dale Wisely, Laura M. Kaminski, F. John Sharp and José Angel Araguz for taking this piece.
Musing on My New Chapbook (4)
I Have a Bird to Whistle is available for purchase now.
From where do these poems come?
The seventh poem in the chapbook, (salt, mask, descent), was begun two months after I’d survived a heart attack, a particular type known commonly as the “widow maker,” and only a few hours after I’d learned a friend had died. The questions that arose from both events have never been answered.
The book is available here to U.S. residents for $7.50, shipping included.
Non-U.S. purchasers can order it directly from me by emailing aBirdtoWhistle@yahoo.com.
Thanks very much for supporting my work. I can’t begin to describe how grateful I am to you all.
Poem Up at Poppy Road Review
My poem “Flame” is up at Poppy Road Review. “Flame” was first published in my chapbook, From Every Moment a Second; the chapbook’s title is taken from a line in this poem. Thank you, editor Sandy Benitez, for taking this poem.
Available at Amazon.Com and Here
Publication Day! And More Good News!
February 25th marked the official publication date of my new chapbook, I Have a Bird to Whistle (7 Palinodes), available here, and if that wasn’t enough to get excited about, I also signed the contract for my next one, The Sadness of Old Fences, which will be published sometime in the distant future.
Thank you, poetry community, for supporting my work!
Scarecrow Ascends
Scarecrow Ascends
Fixed yet not immobile, I watch bits of me drift
over the wavering grain, a diaspora of disparate
selves once gathered. Some openings are blessings.
Others encourage dispersion. Yesterday’s coat-breech
is now a hole from which I trickle. Think of politics,
and how the tiniest crack may expand and engulf
its body, how one lie gains heft through repetition
at the expense of truth, driving fear. And to what
end? More wealth by exclusion? Power? Everything
dissipates. Even those mountains looming over
state houses, even the sun and its gravity, even your
idols and their power over reason. Had I no purpose
I would gladly rip open these rags and beg the wind
to carry me high, piece by fragment, to mingle with
the clouds and the rains to come and the refracted
light from afar, perhaps to glimpse something greater
ahead. Perhaps merely to dispel, to become undone.
* * *
“Scarecrow Ascends” first appeared in Sleet in August 2018.
Earth Keeps Spinning
Earth Keeps Spinning
What book
do I pull from the shelf
in this hour
marking my friend’s
return to that light-drenched
inkling before everything
collapses?
Which title, which
weight shall I
covet? What
do we hold if not
each other?
Being no one, I cannot say.
The earth keeps spinning
even as I walk
to the mailbox,
anticipating new words.
He cannot read these lines.
I do not write them.
* * *
“Earth Keeps Spinning” was first published by Red River Review in August 2018.
