M.J. Iuppa- Two Poems

Instant of Impact

Each time we decide to kick up dust on

the country road & drive West until

the descending sun’s a lozenge melting

red on the horizon, something

happens that’s enough to jar

our mouths open in an instant of  

impact that doesn’t kill us, but

shakes our cores to see the storm's

 message scrawled on a luminous

dark cloud— its calligraphy drips

hard-hitting drops that makes us

shudder, but we can’t

slow down.

 

To Know and Yet Not

Preparing a meal, that is both ordinary and not,

 takes two days and countless thoughts, trying    

to remember every ingredient handed down

in a tradition that could be lost in fair trade.

A subtle change in a recipe one knows by

heart—a pinch of this or this— a shortcut

on time’s one pan mess or an opportunity

to do something else. What compromise

comes in a box or bag or can? Cooking

for one or two or too many works its way

into sad conversations on lost creativity;

leaving us with these dirtied plates.

 

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, Camroc Review, Tar River Poetry, Corvus Review, Clementine Poetry, Postcard Poetry & Prose, and Brief Encounters: A Collection of Contemporary Nonfiction, edited by Judith Kitchen and Dinah Lenney (Norton), among others.  She is the Director of the Visual and Performing Arts Minor Program at St. John Fisher College.