Rapture in Arrears

Many of the poems in S.A. Harper’s second poetry collection were written during the first two years of the COVID-19 pandemic. It turns out isolation doesn’t actually alleviate desire. And Zoom calls and sexting can only go so far before a poet — for example — has to double-down on naked flights of fancy and sharable side-orders of kink:

I am not entirely without environmental concern.
I am aware of the world beyond your undressing,
how this is the earliest I’ve ever seen you in shorts.

You distract me with tales of belching cows while
I imagine how I can see the ozone hole beckoning
from the middle of your Southern Hemisphere.

I can care about Australian sun and your cooter,
metaphorically able to picket and finger you
at the same time. I’m dedicated like that.

I won’t stop until you cry like a koala.
I won’t stop until the echidnas sue for peace.
I won’t stop until we scare off the rising tide.

Some of these poems are Harper’s memories. Some are only dreams. These are poems of young horny love and old-age erectile ennui, of threesomes and me firsts, of summer fireworks and New Year’s champagne corks, of sex toys still on the bedside table when someone wakes to tender morning kisses:

Fresh from the shower,
even here, it smells of soap.
I tongue. You tremble.

This 91-page collection features 52 longer poems (1 to 3 pages each) and over 60 erotic haiku.