ABOUT CYNTHIA J. HARPER
Cynthia Harper lives in San Antonio, Texas. A librarian for the U.S. Court of Appeals, she teaches English and creative writing for Palo Alto College. She co-edited an anthology, Poets from the Springs, and her work appeared in how many moons: a collection of five Texas women poets. Her chapbook, Ruffled Socks, is a reminiscence of her southern childhood.
Snow in South Texas
Cynthia J. Harper
$7.00
Order
ISBN: 1-877603-26-0
Praise for Cynthia Harper's Poetry:
"The poems of Cynthia Harper invite
us into her warm domain, hold us close, and feed us very well. I admire
her striking ability to describe longing
and intimacy, as well as her long eye for the spaces between us. I
admire her wacky humor, her lightning-bolt imagery, her lavish heart.
The first time I heard her read a poem, years ago, I knew; this is
a voice that respects the stories it can tell, that rings with vivid
trueness, that believes in the accent of the genuinely ALIVE."
—Naomi Shihab Nye
"These are smart contemporary poems with a taste for life in the sensual, they are rich with taste, smell and the overtones of love both lost and gained. With phrases like "chocolate without desire, corn without rain." Cynthia Harper's poems won me over."
—Paulette Giles
"The poetry of Cynthia Harper is lush as a Louisiana Bayou, intoxicating as honeysuckle in the dark of night, passionate and reedy as a Janis Joplin tune."
—Lamont B. Steptoe
Chickens
Grandma said chicken was the answer,
especially if you could do the biscuits too,
but for some reason it just didn't stick.
Mama said dip it in egg yellow and fry it hot.
Your mother said watch out for hot spices, no
surprises.
Fifteen hundred chickens,
think of the enormity of that.
Can you see them lying in a
huge pile waiting to be fried?
If only someone had shown them to me
the day I married you,
but there they are,
three chickens per week,
twelve chickens per month,
one hundred and forty-four per year.
Allowing a certain margin of error
fifteen hundred plucked, gutless chickens
waiting for me with flour, paprika,
all that grease. They out lived two
electric skillets and wore a groove
in a cast iron pan.
And you
just ate them one by one
over all those years with
hills of mashed potatoes,
until you met a woman whose father
owned a Colonel Sanders
and you took to take out.
Copyright © Pecan
Grove Press,
1997-2003
For further information contact
H. Palmer
Hall.
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Most recent revision
November 11, 2003
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