Feeding a Fire
Wedged beneath a pile of papers
waiting to be burned, I
find rumpled sheet music
Words pressed against notes,
a tune like the sudden sweep
of snow in late March air . . .
A perfection of our labor that’s
difficult to give up, like this song’s
devotion as if anyone pays attention
Still nothing is the same and this
song’s refrain, wistful at best, not
love or blues, half-truths said
in low light, waiting for embers
to shift in the stove . . .
I close my eyes, knowing
I will sing this without you
Household
Where can a blind man live
who is pursued by bees?
~Neruda
Uncomfortable skin, incessant
itch to jump, to twitch, to hum
constant noise that gives him
hives–makes madness come
alive– a thousand wings fanning
figure eights until cells ignite
into fiery flight that burns
his eyes–tearless cries be-
come disguise, dodging
all that occupies his mind.
Temptation in Standard Time
A fish hook moon skims
a dark city sky, promising
to return morning
without being caught
in a corridor between lives,
tempting those who love
the stolen split-second kiss
to linger in the doorway
that’s damp with fallen leaves–
hard to forget, but
can’t be remembered
Who were you, really?
And I, in spite of
purity, claimed your
unexpected embrace
long enough
to let it go
M. J. Iuppa lives on a small farm near the shores of Lake Ontario. Her most recent poems have appeared in Poetry East, The Chariton Review, Tar River Poetry, Blueline, The Prose Poem Project, and The Centrifugal Eye, among other publications. Her most recent poetry chapbook is As the Crow Flies (Foothills Publishing, 2008), and her second full-length collection is Within Reach (Cherry Grove Collections, 2010). Between Worlds, a prose chapbook, was published by Foothills Publishing in May 2013. She is Writer-in-Residence and Director of the Visual and Performing Arts Minor program at St. John Fisher College in Rochester, New York.
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