Poetry Winter 2013 fiction all issues
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Alysse Kathleen McCanna
Pentimento
& other poems
Peter Nash
Shooting Star
& other poems
Katherine Smith
House of Cards
& other poems
David Sloan
On the Rocks
& other poems
Alexandra Smyth
Exoskeleton Blues
& other poems
John Glowney
The Bus Stop Outside Ajax Bail Bonds
& other poems
Andrea Jurjević O’Rourke
It Was a Large Wardrobe...
& other poems
Lisa DeSiro
Babel Tree
& other poems
Michael Fleming
Reptiles
& other poems
Michael Berkowitz
As regards the tattoo on your wrist
& other poems
Michael Brokos
Landscape without Rest
& other poems
Michael H. Lythgoe
Orpheus In Asheville
& other poems
John Wentworth
morning people
& other poems
Christopher Jelley
Double Exposure
& other poems
Catherine Dierker
dinner party
& other poems
William Doreski
Hate the Sinner, Not the Sin
& other poems
Robert Barasch
Loons
& other poems
Rande Mack
bear
& other poems
Susan Marie Powers
Red Bird
& other poems
Anne Graue
Sky
& other poems
Mariah Blankenship
Tub Restoration
& other poems
Paul R. Davis
Landscape
& other poems
Philip Jackey
Garage drinking after 1989
& other poems
Karen Hoy
A Naturalist in New York
& other poems
Gary Sokolow
Underworld Goddess
& other poems
Michal Mechlovitz
The Early
& other poems
Henry Graziano
Last Apple
& other poems
Stephanie L. Harper
Unvoiced
& other poems
Roger Desy
anhinga
& other poems
R. G. Evans
Hangoverman
& other poems
Frederick L. Shiels
Driving Past the Oliver House
& other poems
Richard Sime
Berry Eater
& other poems
Jennifer Popoli
Generations in a wine dark sea
& other poems
Unvoiced
The words from the dream are
Wisps in the air like broken
Spider webs wrapping invisibly
About my face and forearms
The fake sunrise tarp draped before me
Ripples like a summer mirage
Half-soaked into the rural street
And then as if I were not supposed to
I step through and place my foot
Solidly into an evening of dark specters
Waiting outside of their existence
To become what I am
There
I am the cool turpentine
Wash of grays seeping over
A dusting of brown sand in the road
There
I am the night falling upon
Neglected pastures of weeds
Sputtering up about the silhouettes
Of tree stumps and old swing sets
There
I am the street lamps’ sallow illumine
Peering out sensibly from between
Foolish tree skeleton embraces
There
I am still the child
Twisting acorns into the asphalt
With the soles of her shoes
Squealing gleefully into the night
I, Your Progeny
I cannot get my mind
Around the meaning of your ninety years.
If I multiplied my age, my experiences,
My life’s richness—
Math not being my strong suit—
I would be making your age, events, and richness
Quantifiable,
As if you were simply
A larger, scatter-plot version of me,
Your number and density
Increasing
With every cycle of rebirth and dormancy;
Repeating
Over acre upon acre
Of variegated shades and shade;
Each of your small, too-subtle suffocations
Receding
Into anonymity
By your sheer enormity.
Even if my calculations were viable,
I would be entirely lost
In the matrix of your possibility.
But here,
Where my roots have taken hold,
Where this slice of sun streaks in,
In this cross-section of you—
I cannot count the leaves
That glimmer golden,
Or burn blood-red,
Nor plot each point of light
That breaches the canopy and reaches
The dank floor.
I am not one-third, not one-thirtieth
Of your richness,
Not even a quantum speck
Of your boundless soul,
Yet, dazzled here,
Neither am I invisible.
I quiver, here,
In your engendering light.
Wise at Thirty-five,
Revised at Forty
Preserved like wax museum sculptures,
Erected in their own, obscure enclave,
These two, distinct ages pulled off quite the
Elaborate spectacle—circling
One another in yin-and-yang-fashion,
Gurgling and sputtering dramatically
Toward a crescendo of neurotic
Self-consumption—until the violent
Vortex of their fervent dance dissolved in
A brief instant into oblivion.
Still, I relish the living left to do,
While constantly reliving the living
That can’t be redone, intently watching
Today’s waterfall spill over into
The uncertain basin of tomorrow:
“Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow creeps in this petty pace . . .”
Shakespeare was wise to the relatively
Insignificant fact that tomorrows
Keep coming, regardless of how we spend
Or squander, mete out, or justify them,
Forgetting their order, or which ones were
Real and which were dreaming, or whether there
Is quantifiably a difference.
I have tried and failed to live up to that
“Mysterious,” skulking expectation—
Convinced it was my duty to perform
The scenes from a moral composition,
Which I now know I scripted for myself:
Whether I’d tried pink-nosed and dreamy-eyed
To face into an icy, winter wind
(To look like the cover illustration
Of the children’s book, Eloise in Moscow),
Or to bound—stripped down to nothing but my
Bare disillusionment—through the fertile
Valley beneath a sun-streaked, summer sky,
I’d always been shocked to discover the
Dance was neither beguiling nor beautiful.
How did I manage to cultivate and
Reap such a harvest of indignation?
For an age, I sulked in self-abasement,
Practicing absurd, measured detachment,
While swathed in a café’s lulling morning
Warmth, huddling with coffee and crossword.
I once watched through the glass as a curled, brown
Leaf flapped fitfully in the street, as if
It were some willful creature with purpose
And life blood coursing through its wrinkled veins.
Though I feigned amazement, as it darted
In and out of traffic and leapt anew
With life after each self-orchestrated
Brush with tragedy, I all the while knew
(Though I may have started at its final,
Quick, clever tailspin, as the wind blew it
Out of sight forever), and loved knowing
That on most days, a leaf is just a leaf.
If once I rather resembled a rock’s
Unmovable crest, emerging stubborn
And solitary, from a rushing stream,
My ceaseless shadow blotting out the sun
From the leaves cascading by beneath me,
I now glisten and shiver in the
Constant splash of cold humility.
Stephanie L. Harper
resides with her husband and two children in the Portland, OR, metro area, where she pursues (among countless other interests) the following avocations: Home Schooling Parent; Poet and Essayist; 2-D Visual Artist; Soccer Player; and Promoter (together, with like-minded others) of social justice and of fostering the advancement and welfare of our collective human psyche. Stephanie aspires to become a positive literary voice in the global community.