In this intimate and unflinching collection, Stacy Stephens invites readers on a transformative journey through the landscape of womanhood, identity, and self-discovery.
From the electric uncertainty of youth to the quiet revelations of maturity, Stephens crafts a narrative of a life fully examined—where relationships collapse and rebuild, where expectations are challenged, and where a woman finds her voice amid the chaos of societal expectations.
With raw honesty and lyrical precision, these poems explore the intersections of love, motherhood, disappointment, and empowerment. Stephens masterfully weaves together moments of vulnerability with flashes of defiance, creating a tapestry of experiences that feels at once deeply personal and universally resonant.
"Now I Know Myself" stands as both a testament to the struggles of becoming and a celebration of finally arriving. Through her keen observations and evocative imagery—from rain-soaked cafés to moonlit bedrooms—Stephens crafts a world where self-knowledge becomes the ultimate act of rebellion and grace.
This collection speaks to anyone who has ever questioned their place, fought to redefine themselves, or found unexpected strength in the journey toward authenticity. Stephens reminds us that knowing oneself is not a destination but a continuous unfolding—a process as beautiful as it is necessary.
Below you can read a small collection of poetry found within the book. If you enjoy this excerpt, consider PURCHASING MY BOOK!
The Good Girl Exhibit
Summer is abloom,
And we make our way
Through the steady stream
Of side-walk passers-by,
to the small mom and pop,
A rail-road station of
Sometime yesterday
Where the young cashier girl
Bids her mothers wishes.
Old men carry in their canes,
Coffee extra black, ma’am,
And she taps the sugar bowl empty,
I observe, my eyes dancing among
The shelves of jarred jelly and
The lemon-spray scent of
Wood rotting, steady drip-drop,
Ceiling leaking like a faucet,
A dust-bunny brine of surplus treasure.
And my grandmother,
Never young in her rubber sandals,
Bobby-pins swimming the net
Of gray on black,
I watch her hands, wrinkled but steady,
Examine a can of beans,
Twenty-five cents, you can’t beat that,
And I swat at a lone knat,
His legs kneading a path through my arm hair.
I remember the days of my girlhood,
how my hands would finger
the magazine display shelves
Against the roaming eyeball
Of my fathers’ inhibitions,
Like a microscopic memory,
I’d carry the captions and headlines
Home with me: ten days to new you,
How to drive men crazy in bed,
New fall fashions, blond-lady in a red mini.
Hidden between my breasts,
Two flat areolas of immaturity,
And the thrifty feel of my wool sweater,
I’d slide those secrets of sophistication
Into my closet, two shelves below my shirts,
Three boxes back where the words gathered,
Because virgin Christian girls
Weren’t supposed to wear tight blue jeans,
Writing poetry under maple trees,
About backseats and football game bleachers.
We were never supposed to know
The six steps of a sizzling romance,
Twenty rules to a healthy sex life,
And of the one-night stands in Spain.
Things of Me
I am...
The rambling farmhouse
of a three-year-old's dreams
where depression lifted from the limbs
of my favorite aunt, a reverse mid-suicide
so she could grow into me,
my second mother.
The pink paper heart
of your childhood
Valentine's Day box,
time-beaten and wrinkled,
though you can still read me.
The lost words of Othello,
and a purple lose leaf notebook
where the lessons of teenage poetry
and John Lennon opened my world
like the rare knowledge of an antique book.
A private-college graduation,
my mind a melting pot of
Jung and Adler, then my own
intrinsic theory of the existential world,
how I could wrap it in my words
like a gift horse or a bad name.
A pair of bell-bottom jeans
draped across the fraying brown
recliner of my first marriage,
so worn they touch my curves
like a second skin, a latex glove.
A girl in love so thick
that it crowded the horizon
like a webbed bridge of frozen words,
so icy I tripped across the meaning
and an unforgiving clock-tick
stole our only chance.
A half-packed suitcase
that still won't close,
zippered smile amongst a pile
of frilly panties and parting letters,
San Francisco in the side pocket.
A long strand of brown hair
that dangles heavily, wet of tears
like an abandoned string
of spider web across his shoulder,
the one I always laid my head across.
Now I Know Myself
“I was in a queer mood, thinking myself very old: but now I am a woman again - as I always am when I write.”
-Virginia Wolfe
That summer autumn groaned for return,
Leaves in the trees turning orange in their skin,
I watched them out the eye of my window
And wished I could outgrow myself into a new disguise.
It was the time of ever-changing isolation,
The time of teenage boredom, the time of nothingness
Not unlike pages blowing upon a bitter winter wind,
Only it wasn’t winter and for him my heart grew warm.
Sixteen times like a vandal, like something scarlet
I stole away with him to secret places, memories unmarked,
I peeled away my shell, like an egg or a snake, or a rebirthing
And in the end, like a river, he swam away.
I lost myself behind the barricade of books,
Their pages dog eared and bristling to my virgin fingers,
My eyes a sponge of my minds mediator,
Within the stories and lines and words I found my truth.
Like the Spring spun her golden web into my horizon,
Summer finds me again unveiling, not innocence this time
But a sense of sincere sophistication, the reflection of a woman
A flower bloomed from the depths of the dead, now I know myself.
Daughter of Yesterday
Each daughter is a dot on a bell,
a standard deviation symbolism,
Of genius, Plain Jane, Beatnik,
The numbers stunting their growth
Like leprosy to the skin, cells breaking backward.
Each young girl is new specimen for the microscope,
Congenial in their virgin smiles,
Concave of their sex still unborn,
The sophistication of womanhood dormant
Even amidst the semi-innocence of open windows
And secrets coiling themselves through phone wire
Like snakes waiting to strike, it comes at it’s own whim.
In these fast times, childhood fades overnight,
Like a dirty pop-can against a rusted Chevy bumper,
Dirty words and spinning bottles dent the interior,
Desire grows in one’s loin, fiery and cancerous
And suddenly the men become stars,
They hang from tree branches like lantern-lights.
Gods of Chance
This is the June of 3am,
The time of night when Summer
Lifts the skirt of her thighs,
A discreet dance of ‘rings around the moon,’
I watch atop my balcony the boats
As they make love to the laps of cerulean waves
And dream myself a constellation atop the water.
I imagine each woman is a piece of me,
Right down to my paint-stained poets hands,
When at night Monet whispers into my ears
The sins of each sunflower, the seedling, the lie.
How I try to mimic his short thrusts and strong strokes
Beneath the naked spark of a moon beam.
Sometimes when I paint, and paste, and rearrange
The magnetic parts of me, truth slaps me
Like a raw circuit of copper wire,
And I manage to believe I’m not married,
Have never bore the noose cords of romance,
Dry as a dead rose petal, it’s browned thorn menacing.
I fall into the abyss of starving-artist reverie,
Pretending there’s no new lover in my bed,
Bathing my sheets the gasoline-stink of sex.
I listen to folk songs and try on the single life
Like a pair of old jogging shoes, lying empty
All these years, but awaiting another mornings run.
And I remember the Norse campus in my head,
The woman sentiment of empty pockets and dreams
Cracking the center of my core like antique China tea-cups,
How life found me living amongst empty yogurt cartons
And the bland taste of tuna fish straight from the can,
Amongst words upon lines upon notebooks of bleeding prose,
Useless without an agent, or so they preached it vehemently.
Back then I believed dreams were things you folded
And stuffed into your pockets, quotes from dead Presidents,
Classic vignettes of famous poets,
Haiku of the immoral Victorian feminists,
They were whims atop a bruise-stricken thumb nail
A penny-well toss to the Gods of fate and chance.