S Stephanie

S Stephanie holds an MFA in Writing from Vermont College of Fine Arts and lives in Rollinsford, NH.  She has taught Creative Writing, Poetry, and Literature on the college level for 19 years.  Her poetry and reviews have appeared in many literary  magazines such as The Birmingham Poetry Review, The Café Review, The Larcom Review, The St. Petersburg Review, The Southern Review, The Sun, and Third  Coast. She has three chapbooks, Throat (Igneus Press),  What the News Seemed to Say  (Pudding House Press/re-released by Igneus Press), and So This Is What It Has Come To  (forthcoming from Finishing Line Press). She published and co-edited the poetry magazine, Crying Sky: Poetry & Conversation 2005-2007 with her late husband, NH Poet Laureate W.E. Butts, and has been engaged in the writing community for many years, offering workshops, organizing readings and writing events.  She is a retired nurse of 26 years who worked in Women’s Health, Dermatology and Gerontology.

    Sample her poems below

Franz Wright asks “What do you see yourself doing in 10 minutes?”

Sitting on the edge of my chair, unbuttoning my chest

and watching the shipwreck of my culture pass through.

How the news drones on as another captain jumps

into the latest Grand Old Party’s boat, then threatens

to sue when the scandal of his pedophilia costs him the election.

I’ll want to get up and go to the corner store where they have red slushes

and an ATM that charges me twice. Sometimes three times! I see

where they were robbed again last night. I’m not afraid of guns. I’m terrified

of the people behind them. I wish I could go back to my old job

at the bookstore, but it’s gone virtual and I don’t know how to swim

through ether. How Queequeg would hate it here.

I wish I could write the novel that convinces everyone

to go back to their childhoods, embrace Popeye

and Bluto, go on, get down and sentimental

even if it means licking the cream out of the Oreos.

In other words, in 10 minutes, I’ll continue

building that boat of my dreams. The one that skims

over these oceans brimming with oil and needles.

What else is there to do? Now that we have allowed

a mockery of Melville’s fathomless seas

made a buffoonery of Whitman and his green grasses?

If Only

If only the bowl of apples

 had not been left out so long

If only we had watered the rose bush

a little sooner in summer

If only we had  not let the cat out

 into the evening field

Or at least voted ‘yes’

 to build the town a new library

If only the mumbling bag lady

had caught the bus driver’s eye

And we had decided

 on metal for the dinette set

And something in fire engine red

for transportation

If only we had said “ticking clock”

 as our very first words

If only the blanket we’ve dragged

 behind us all these years

Was made of something

other than thread