2 Poems by M. J. Iuppa

Snowmelt

Waking before daylight, before
night’s dream evaporates into another

dimension, I leave home in the dark’s
uncertainty– the cough of the car’s engine                                                                                       

before it catches on– the arthritic roll of tires
on icy gravel turning onto a slick street where

puddles overflow with half moons gleaming
& I vanish into still air, thinking only of what

lies ahead– a day full of words & silence–
melting snow, fenceposts leaning into hillsides,                               

winter’s promising woods coming to light
as I round the bend to find another lonesome

town, incidental, yet forever, exactly
the same as the place I left.


Mud

What do they call the sadness of a solitary sleep?
                                                     −−− Pablo Neruda
There is a certain remoteness to the puddle.
 Its brackish water ripples in goose bumps,
concealing mud’s sole contemplation that
lies just below the surface, dreaming of
your misstep . . .


Bionote

 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 others.  Recent chapbook is As the Crows Flies (Foothills Publishing, 2008) and second full length collection, Within Reach, (Cherry Grove Collections, 2010); Forthcoming prose chapbook Between Worlds (Foothills Publishing) She is Writer-in-Residence and Director of the Visual and Performing Arts Minor program at St. John Fisher College, Rochester, NY.