Ovation Face

The poems in S.A. Harper’s third poetry collection were written mostly after the COVID-19 pandemic had receded. Isolation has residual effects, and the new normal turns out to be just as uncertain as the old. That’s where Harper begins to explore sex and desire:

I’ve gone Bedlam to Bellevue, misjudged
and locked up again for far less offense
than flashing my freckled ass at strangers,

exposed, caught wanting your prick so bad
that I howled in Walmart out of turn,
made a peck of prudes’ heads spin clean ‘round,

them ashamed to recognize why I cried,
remembering but keeping their counsel, knowing
damned well I dripped with honesty, not hysteria…

These are poems of young memories and middle-aged ennui, of itchy ropes and flying butt plugs, of horny squirrels and rocks that look like whales, of summer beaches and winter couches, of Red Hots and gummy snakes, of crepe paper streamers and appetites freely expressed:

worshipped at her toes
she wants his attentions
a few feet higher

This 91-page collection features 58 longer poems (1 to 2 pages each) and over 60 erotic haiku.