A Poem by M.J. Iuppa

When There’s Nothing Left To Say

After days of travel & talk, I

looked in my rearview mirror & saw
winter inside my eyes– blue-black hues–

texture of clouds, taking forever

to cross the sky. Ground fog rose
in my chest & settled in my throat.

I could no longer sing along, pretending

that I was going to wake to a day
unlike any other . . .

M.J.Iuppa lives on a small farm near the shores of Lake Ontario. For the past eight years, she and her husband Peter Tonery have been committed to food sustainability. She has numerous publications (poetry, fiction, nonfiction and plays) in national and international journals as well as two full length poetry collections Night Traveler (Foothills, 2003) and Within Reach (Cherry Grove Collection, 2010) and five chapbooks; her latest prose chapbook Between Worlds is forthcoming from Foothills. She served as the poetry adviser (2007-2012) for the New York Foundation for the Arts, and since 1986, has worked as a teaching artist in the schools, K-12 for a variety of agencies (RCSD, BOCES 2, Young Audiences, Genesee Valley BOCES, Project U.N.I.Q.U.E. and V.I.T.A.L. Writers & Books, and others) Currently she is Writer-in-Residence and Director of Arts Minor Program at St. John Fisher College.