Because I Said So

It’s been the same old thing, year after year:
You mope around, all gloomy & convective,
grow turbulent with variable shear,
& bluster in that helical, invective
tone. All I want to do this spring is spread
some cheer, inspire the bees to pollinate,
warm up the sea, ensure the fish get fed,
& coax some pinnipeds beach-ward to mate;
but you just keep going all vertical-
like, sprouting vortices to spew about
debris! Enough! Go be a spectacle
in Tornado Alley! Air that funnel out—
then find a nice, dark cloud, & settle down
to spawn some little terrors of your own…

***

Stephanie L. Harper is a recently transplanted Oregonian pursuing her MFA at Butler University in Indianapolis. Harper is a Pushcart Prize Nominee, Judge of the 2019 AWP Intro Journals Prize in Poetry, and author of the chapbooks This Being Done and The Death’ s-Head’s Testament. Her poems appear or are forthcoming in Slippery Elm, The High Window (Featured American Poet), Panoply, Isacoustic*, Eclectica, Moonchild Magazine, The Winnow Magazine, and elsewhere.