M.J. Iuppa- Two Poems

So Many Layers of Gray

Curse me, my thumb bleeds—silver roadside thistle, gone to needle,

pricks a warning—I didn’t heed its message from death.
I didn’t think of prophesy. I didn’t know the rickety door
to this world would bring me maturity.

What else will be mine before sundown?
I stand toothless— my thumb soaks
 in my mouth’s comfort.

I think god knows how this ends—
disheveled—dragging  an arm through
a discarded winter coat— I turn
blank face to the countryside burning
in autumn’s fire & think I’m the window
washer’s widow.

I haven’t seen clearly for a year, living

in the dark city of my head.

M.J.Iuppa

 

What You Left Behind

To buy a potted ficus with good intentions,
then leave it happy-go-lucky in a corner of
the living room was hasty.

 

A month of Mondays, you overlooked
that bit of green languishing in forced
heat— its leaves nearly transparent

 

in an illusion of itself. You squirmed, seeing
what you had done in the perfect art of
forgetting.

 

The new tenant threw it away.

 M.J.Iuppa

Brief Bio:

M.J. Iuppa lives on Red Rooster Farm near the shores of Lake Ontario. Most recent poems, lyric essays and fictions have appeared in the following journals: Poppy Road Review, Black Poppy Review, Digging to the Roots, 2015 Calendar, Ealain, Poetry Pacific Review, Grey Sparrow Press: Snow Jewel Anthology, 100 Word Story, Avocet, Eunoia Review, Festival Writer, Silver Birch Press: Where I Live Anthology, Turtle Island Quarterly, Wild Quarterly, Boyne Berries Magazine (Ireland), The Lake, (U.K.), Punchnel’s; forthcoming in Camroc Review, Tar River Poetry, Corvus Review, Clementine Poetry, Postcard Poetry & Prose, among others.  She is the Director of the Visual and Performing Arts Minor Program at St. John Fisher College.  You can follow her musings on art, writing and sustainability on mjiuppa.blogspot.com.