Connie Soper
Connie Soper is a hard-core Oregonian who likes to visit small towns, hike, and walk the beaches of Oregon. Many of her poems are inspired by experiencing those places in all the seasons. She divides her time between Portland, and Manzanita, Oregon. Her poems have appeared in Ekphrastic Review, Catamaran, Cider Press Review, One Art, and elsewhere. Her first full-length book of poetry, A Story Interrupted, was published by Airlie Press in 2022. She is currently at work on her second collection.
Postcard from August
I am the plush underside of a bee
staggering under the fruity weight
of my own nectar. Reverberating like
a honeyed hive in the heat of your core.
This is what I love about being me.
By this I mean long days softening
their edges; the purple of eggplant, black-
berry stains. Clouds spinning a serenade.
I am August, writing to you from this
place of abundance. Take what I offer
for here and for now—the sting, the pinch,
a bounty of basil, leaves still on stems.
Hold me, please, like a ripe plum in your mouth.
Gorge yourself on me. Before it’s too late.
Milagros
Outside the Cathedral of Santo Domingo
vendors hawk milagros—tiny miracles pounded
from tin, toy body parts offered to the saints.
Arms dangling from sockets. Eyes, spleen, lungs.
And, of course, the flaming heart.
So many ways a heart can be aggrieved.
The faithful light candles to cure
what’s fractured or broken, cancerous or arthritic.
Votives huddle together like a flock of innocents.
The nave is cool and ripe with the smell of scented smoke.
I commune with the saints in my own way, not quite
a prayer, not quite a litany of rosaries. I conjure up
amulets to collect, candles for the blessings.
One for the sins committed by ancestors I never knew.
One for the sadness of loves never reaching fruition.
One for the loss of my country as I once knew it.
One for rivers that are no longer pure.
One for those sleeping in tents under the freeway.
One for my mother, lost in dementia.
And when the whole world from Oaxaca to Mumbai
is ablaze with all that fury, hope and despair,
some will call it futile, a pilgrimage of superstition.
I just want to sit a while longer in the amber glow
of flames others have lit.
Her Cocoon
My mother with dementia does not wander;
does not roam the long halls
of the memory care unit waving
her cane like a weapon. She is not trying
to go home, not searching for those
gone before her. Though surely those visitations—
my father, her mother, the son she outlived—
could offer a kind of comfort I cannot.
I bring to her what I think
she must be missing: peaches from the Okanagan Valley,
digital bingo, radio set to the oldie channel
of big bands. Once in a while
we drink Chardonnay in the dingy lobby dressed up
with a few potted plants. As if
some memory muscle could conjure up
all those oaky buttery Happy Hours on the deck
of her suburban home, watching
the sun unkiss the sky.
How seasons melded without resistance,
green to gold to brown.
No clock, no calendar in the cocoon
of her own private space—the only horizon
a window overlooking the courtyard.
She does not wander, is never lost,
not wanting to unravel
those silken strands that envelop her.
