In This Night's Distance by M.J. Iuppa

Is my body sleeping?  I know

my body’s ampersand, hand

cupped over mouth, hoping

the dream of Spring never stops

to rest— swallows return like

electricity, like fire glowing

on a matchstick— I think my

body’s made of silver wire

unfolding in night’s slow-

motion— the shape of stars

breathing life, or is it death?

This crystal light has wings.

M.J. Iuppa’s fourth poetry collection is This Thirst (Kelsay Books, 2017). For the past 31 years, she has lived on a small farm near the shores of Lake Ontario. Check out her blog: mjiuppa.blogspot.com for her musings on writing, sustainability & life’s stew.

On A Foot Bridge Too Narrow by M.J. Iuppa

We knew, at once, this meeting would end in impasse.

We walked towards each other on a rough-edged plank.          

Below the icy river raged, too dark to gauge; too swift

for safety. I won’t dive in. You can’t fly off. What to do?

Stand here, face to face, looking into each other’s dark

eyes, waiting for the first move? Stalemate, standoff,

deadlock— which one of us will turn our backs & slip

away? Which one of us will follow two steps behind,

like a crouching shadow? We could be stalled here for-

ever, not ready to shift forward or back.





M.J. Iuppa ‘s fourth poetry collection is This Thirst (Kelsay Books, 2017).  For the past 30 years, she has lived on a small farm near the shores of Lake Ontario. Check out her blog: mjiuppa.blogspot.com for her musings on writing, sustainability & life’s stew.

Sleepwalking in the Season of Wind by M.J. Iuppa

A mind unwinds in sleep, unwinds in this

wind’s howl of affliction, of drawn-out

anguish that extinguishes one’s candle-

light under its tongue— without speaking, 

it’s sung—like the rise & dip of oars 

pulling through water—little gasps

of air, of not breathing— then, a hitch 

of one’s undoing—confessing 

everything to darkness and a far-flung sea.

M.J. Iuppa ‘s fourth poetry collection is This Thirst (Kelsay Books, 2017).  For the past 30 years, she has lived on a small farm near the shores of Lake Ontario. Check out her blog: mjiuppa.blogspot.com for her musings on writing, sustainability & life’s stew.

End of Season by M.J. Iuppa

There you are, my darling, standing

by the side of the road, looking hard at

asters full of bees, so ripe, so ripe, this

could be the last time you’ll witness

summer’s exhaustion. And you wonder

why I have given you this task to watch

something so small, so incidental. I

see how you shake your head, trying

to make sense of  this hesitation

next to the mailbox:

How did today’s letters

fall into your hands?

M.J. Iuppa‘s fourth poetry collection is This Thirst (Kelsay Books, 2017).  For the past 29 years, she has lived on a small farm near the shores of Lake Ontario. Check out her blog: mjiuppa.blogspot.com for her musings on writing, sustainability & life’s stew.

Fairy Tale by M.J. Iuppa

The cottage’s shadow dragged like a moss-covered turtle across 

the front yard and disappeared into the lilacs blooming near 

the rusty gate.  She looked out of the loft’s small window

and watched her mother pinning her scratchy undergarments

to the clothesline’s naked light. She felt ashamed. Poverty

lived everywhere— yet, its remoteness made it impossible to

escape. She knew the flap of bloomers in the bright air would

be noticed by a passerby for its sudden shock of purity.  She

looked at her hands at rest— lines of dirt under her fingernails

revealed her secret work, digging in the garden.

M.J. Iuppa, Director of the Visual & Performing Arts Minor Program and Lecturer in Creative Writing at St. John Fisher College, and a part-time lecturer in Creative Writing at The College at Brockport, was awarded the New York State Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Adjunct Teaching, 2017.

What I Haven't Said by M.J. Iuppa

Water trickles onto a depression

where sandy soil lets it bubble up,

reluctant to pop before it settles

in a spot where it soaks down

to roots twisted in a silver knot.

A ghostly place that gives me

shivers, watching water disappear

to a trace that settles the shock of

cold water pouring over bare

feet, over flesh that pinks with

surprise—toes curl instantly in

defense—wanting words to kick    

& scream, like blossoms lasting

on a cactus tree.

M.J. Iuppa, Director of the Visual & Performing Arts Minor Program and Lecturer in Creative Writing at St. John Fisher College, and a part-time lecturer in Creative Writing at The College at Brockport, was awarded the New York State Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Adjunct Teaching, 2017.

Reflection on the Opposite / How to Find One's True Voice by M.J. Iuppa

Reflection on the Opposite

                            ~Howden Pond

Watching the water strider skim

across the pond’s morning face, I

see a slight grimace— shudder of

being touched when it’s unwelcomed.

Too early to disturb this hour’s slow

awakening, I sit on a flat rock, full of

agitation, wanting to cast my disquiet

into the pond’s open mouth, waiting

to see my sleepless face floating in

shallows— there, close to the blind

of wild irises candled with sunlight.

How To Find One’s True Voice

When night slips into the yard

without wind, without chill, I

step inside the sycamore’s

shadow & look up and up

into the dome of sky that’s full

of winter stars & feel my spirit

tussling in my chest, like

a small child trying to break

my hold. Absentmindedly

my hand rests against my heart’s

race & I listen to what could

scare me if I look closer— like

the silence of an owl brushing

past my shoulder, filling

that space I keep

at a distance.

M.J. Iuppa, Director of the Visual &Performing Arts Minor Program and Lecturer in Creative Writing at St. John Fisher College, and a part-time lecturer in Creative Writing at The College at Brockport, was awarded the New York State Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Adjunct Teaching, 2017.

Someone or Another by M.J. Iuppa

Staring into night’s still air, snow’s 

newest disorder drifts among a puzzle 

of trees that line the path to the lake.

Our walk becomes slow & sure-

footed—steps taken to skirt chit

chat’s sudden pitfall where

we’re left— suspended—

our breath hanging 

in the cold.

M.J. Iuppa lives on a small farm near the shores of Lake Ontario. She is Director of the Visual and Performing Arts Minor at St. John Fisher College. Her lyric essays have appeared in In Brief: Short Takes on the Personal, edited by Mary Paumier Jones and Judith Kitchen (Norton, 1999), Short Takes: Brief Encounters with Contemporary Nonfiction, edited by Judith Kitchen (Norton, 2005) and Brief Encounters: A Collection of Contemporary Nonfiction, edited by Judith Kitchen and Dinah Lenney (Norton, 2015), and her recently released third full length poetry collection Small Worlds Floating, Cherry Grove Collections, August 2016.

M.J. Iuppa - Fog

The clock chimes three in the morning; streetlights, lining the cobbled street, glow incandescent yellow. In fog, this autumn feels more like a painting than a season. Something caught in an everlasting hour between stumble and stairway. I think I hear footsteps; yet, I know I’m alone. When I stop and look into the printmaker’s window, I see my eyes in the clock’s face staring back at me. I could be anywhere else, but I am stuck here.

*

I think it’s getting cold. My breath becomes two clouds disappearing on glass, but it doesn’t startle me. One hand on the storefront’s brick ledge gives me balance. I search his display for  the vanity table with its thin vials of perfume and an iridescent abalone shell that holds a loose string of pearls.  Everything is as I left it. There’s a thick drip waiting to fall from the espresso machine.  He still hasn’t washed the two demitasse cups left in the sink. What is he waiting for? These incidentals, ignored in daylight, leave a dark mess.

*

Qu’est-ce que?   My mind seesaws: What to do, do I do what I want to do? Are we two gray mice who have fallen into the bucket of cream?  Am I the one who drowned, or the one who paddled hard all night, churning cream until there was a pat of butter to rest upon?  A woman must learn to save herself, he said, turning his back to me. 

*

C’est Musée de L’Ordinaire.  How does one stand out as evidence among ruin?  He said he wanted to love me for a long time.  He knelt before me, pressing his rough face against my thin chest. His tears soaked my cotton dress. When he lifted his head to look up at me, the gold cross hanging around my neck grazed his lips. He smiled slightly, knowing he had me under his spell. He told me he was going to keep me for eternity.

*

I wish I could yawn.  If you’re looking for me, I‘m here, pressed under glass.

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 Writer-in-Residence and 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.

M.J. Iuppa - The Weight of the World

“Stop that,” she said, in a way a child confronts a stranger. She pulled                                                            
the blanket up to her chin and glared at him with that look, don’t come                                                  
any closer, do you hear me? He didn’t move— stood by the chair full                                                
of sour-smelling clothes—a shadow of himself, listing in moonlight        
                     
slipping through venetian blinds. He was nearly blue, holding his breath.                                    
A rosary wound tightly around his clenched fist. He didn’t know any                                            
prayers by heart. But she did. She knew them all. She felt the weight of

the world, and she couldn’t shake him off.

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 Writer-in-Residence and 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.

M.J. Iuppa - A Headache Killed Her

The first time I met Elba, she was standing behind a mahogany bar, opening a bottle of Chianti from Tuscany with a hand-held corkscrew. Deftly, that is in two moves, she flipped the corkscrew open like a jackknife, and without looking at the bottle’s neck, she plucked the cork and poured two glasses of red for table 28.

Elba was the wine mistress at Theo’s Fine Dining. A living Modigliani: long neck, dark brown eyes, hair pulled into a severe bun, and her lips stained red.  She rarely smiled.  Her thinness made everyone wonder.  The way she could slip through cracks of doors and slid along hallways without disturbing the air; except for the scent of her perfume lightly everywhere.  She was hypnotic.  

I was working as a cocktail waitress.  I know absurd because I didn’t know anything about liquor. On my first night, a couple of ‘q-tips’ sat at a corner table in the bar, listening to the piano player.  I asked them if they would like a cocktail.  The man said, “Yes, Bombay gin and tonic, lime on rocks.”  The woman said, “Presbyterian.”  I said, “So you don’t drink?” She said, “What?”  Then she looked at her husband with that oh-god-she’s-an-idiot-look. He said, with his head cocked slightly away from his wife as if he were telling me a secret, “No, it’s a cocktail: Bourbon, club soda and ginger ale.”  

“Oh, coming up.” I swiveled left and high heeled it over to the bar.

“Bombay Gin and Tonic with lime on rocks and a Presbyterian,” I called out. Elba nodded and in two blinks had the drinks set up on the bar.  She looked at me and gave me the close to the chest ‘hurry along’ hand signal.  I placed the glasses on my tray and took them over to the couple without sloshing a drop.  The man winked at me.  The wife pretended to be carried away by the night’s music.  I smiled at both of them like I was trying to locate a bad smell.

By the end of the night, I had 35 dollars in quarters, nickels and dimes, and sore feet.  I sat at the bar and listened to the waitresses chatter about their night.  Elba was mopping the bar with a clean white towel, listening too.  Then a slender guy wandered in.  The waitresses greeted him. 

“Hey there, Lamb,” they said.  “Here for last call?”  

Elba arched her right eyebrow. Frankie was a Theo bartender, who couldn’t work earlier, but was suddenly here at closing time.  

“Just in the neighborhood,” he said,” wondering if you’re going out for eggs? How ‘bout it, Elba, my Latina rose, you in?” 

Without saying a word, we knew she was going home. She had another headache. Lamb shrugged his shoulders, trying to act casual, like it was no big deal.  But I could see that it was.  Marilyn, Judy and Suzanne were so ready for eggs, they sang a chorus of “Yeah, let’s scramble,” and everyone left in separate cars.

Before Elba and I left the bar, I asked her about Lamb. “He is such a woof,” she said.  

“A woof?”

“Yes, a woof.” 

“But I think he likes you, right?” 

“Don’t make my headache worse, “she said, as we walked out to the parking lot.  Her red pinto was next to mine. 

“Well, Good night, Elba, thanks for everything.”

“No problem,” she said, opening her car door.  When the dome light clicked on, we both could see that there was a slender florist box sitting on her car seat.”

“Someone left you flowers,” I said, suspecting that it was Frankie. 

Elba pulled the box out of the still warm car and opened it slowly.  A dozen black roses with a note scrawled in black ink: You’re killing me. 

Without expression, Elba took the bundle of flowers and shook its papery petals all over parking lot, then dropped the stems back in the box and tossed it into the backseat.

“Not-a-chance,” she said. Then she rubbed her temple and closed her eyes.  “Killing him,” she muttered, “this is killing me.”

“Good night, Elba. . . feel better,” I said. 

Once inside of our cars, we both looked up at the three o’clock moon descending in the summer sky, then we gave each other a little wave good bye before we headed in opposite directions. 

Later came as a phone call: Elba never woke up.





M.J. Iuppa lives on a small farm near the shores of Lake Ontario.  Between Worlds is her most recent chapbook, featuring lyric essays, flash fiction and prose poems (Foothills Publishing, 2013). Recent poems, flash fictions, and essays in When Women Waken, Poppy Road Review, Wild: A Quarterly, Eunoia Review, Andrea Reads America, Canto, Grey Sparrow Journal, The Poetry Storehouse, Avocet, Right Hand Pointing, Tiny-lights, The Lake (U.K.), The Kentucky Review, and more.  She is the Writer-in-Residence and Director of the Visual and Performing Arts Minor Program at St. John Fisher College.  You can follow her musings on writing and creative sustainability on Red Rooster Farm on mjiuppa.blogspot.com.

M.J. Iuppa - Thin Walls

She sits on an upside down bucket in the fruit cellar in the dark. Cobwebs dangle in still air before her. The suggestion of a filmy thread glancing against her cheek makes her shiver. She knows she isn’t alone; spiders watch from their corners. She doesn’t blink.  

Above her, floorboards creak beneath the weight of footsteps, searching room to room. They are arguing about the iron gate that leads out back.  It was left ajar again. She stares at her grubby hands.  Flecks of paint stuck to her palms’ lifelines glitter. She spits onto her hands and scrubs her palms against her shirt, leaving obvious smears. She wasn’t where she was supposed to be.

 Out back, beyond the barn and overgrown honeysuckle, beyond earshot was the cemetery. There, she found her spot beneath an ancient willow, whose leafy branches were long braids that nearly touched the sandy ground. She could press her back against its trunk and feel the wind  tremble ever-so-slightly.  It lifted her to be there among the dead.  She forgot to close the gate.

The black and white chickens followed her into the cemetery.  She watched them discover what she wanted to hide.  Such a guilty thing, she worried they would find what she prized the most—a piece of rose quartz, a gold thimble, a blue feather, a map.  She shooed them away, inches from the infant’s unmarked grave.

She doesn’t blink, listening to their calls.  She leans forward and grabs the first jar of apricot jam sitting on the shelf, then rises quietly, up the unfinished stairs, pausing for a moment at the door left open a crack.  Her gray eyes adjust to the light as she pushes the door open.  They hear her, but don’t think much.  She sets the jar on the kitchen table without a word, and waits. They look past her.

The past, she thinks, is hardly the time it takes to move forward, or back; inside or ahead of its evolving story.  She saved her truth in the cemetery’s packed earth. She knows what they did. Not every dream is an escape.

M.J. Iuppa lives on a small farm near the shores of Lake Ontario.  Between Worlds is her most recent chapbook, featuring lyric essays, flash fiction and prose poems (Foothills Publishing, 2013). Recent poems, flash fictions, and essays in When Women Waken, Poppy Road Review, Wild: A Quarterly, Eunoia Review, Andrea Reads America, Canto, Grey Sparrow Journal, The Poetry Storehouse, Avocet, Right Hand Pointing, Tiny-lights, The Lake (U.K.), The Kentucky Review, and more.  She is the Writer-in-Residence and Director of the Visual and Performing Arts Minor Program at St. John Fisher College.  You can follow her musings on writing and creative sustainability on Red Rooster Farm on mjiuppa.blogspot.com.