Take a Seat - Make a Friend?

Happy Valentine's Day!

Origami Heart
Crease folds, scrunch up
& wrinkle.  Blink its pulse:
wings of candor– Ceylon
cinnamon red, red, red.
Cinderella’s last waltz.


M.J. Iuppa

first published in Twenty20 Journal.

Little Green -- Joni Mitchell

Good News and Conversations

Good News!

Holy Cow! Press accepted my poem "Neutralities"  for inclusion in The Heart of All That Is: Reflections on Home, to be published in a paperback edition during October, 2013.

Thank you, Jim Perlman, Deborah Cooper, Mara Hart, Pamela Mittlefehldt, co-editors.

***

Last week I began a new residency at School 33.  A second grader asked me how old I was. This is the conversation:
"M.J., How old are you?"
 "120 years old."
 Really? you are 120?"
 " Yep.  How do I look?"
 "You look good, Like 36."
"I do! That's wonderful. 36, really."
 "M.J."
"Yes"
"God must have blessed you with such a long life."
 " Why yes--yes he has."

***

Snowstorm on Friday, 2/8/2013, shutdown Rochester.
I stayed home and enjoyed the weather from the inside.  It was a quiet weekend.
Made a pot of  soul stirring soup.


Life is good.

And it snowed and snowed and snowed . . .

Photo by K. Iuppa  After the Storm, 2013

RE/VERSE

My poem "Traveling Alone . . ." which was first published in the Bryant Literary Review is now posted on Ralph Murre's  RE/VERSE. 

Please click on link to read: 
http://littleeaglereverse.blogspot.com

I discovered this journal in December and have been enjoying Murre's selection of reprinted poems matched with his exceptional art or others' artwork.  I was thrilled to be included and hope some of you will consider sending your previously published poems to be showcased again.  This is especially vital for poems only available in print. I think it's a double showcase, for the poem and the journal/review which first published the work.

Read the submission guidelines carefully before submitting.

 

New York, New York!

Photo collage by Lou Iuppa, 2013


Can you feel the energy of the city. . . Background lyrics of Alicia Keyes ( I Heart Her) "New York,"
a theme song if you're living there . . . and here what is the theme song for upstate NY . . .

We had a thunderstorm over the weekend.  Authentic thunder and lightning rolling in, over the lake, for
several hours.  The downpour aided in melting the drifts of snow.  Now creeks swell, cornfields have furrows of brackish water, gray skies are in a mad rush , full of rumpus . . .There's an adage that proclaims a thunderstorm in January  means the end of winter.  Last year, at this time of the first thaw, we had a thunderstorm, and after that storm, winter was nonexistent. Will it happen two years in a row?

The semester has begun and I have been in the thick of planning events for my program and assisting other programs and departments with their events too.  We're going to have a rockin' semester at St. John Fisher.
I'm so excited about it.

In the mail, seed catalogs are arriving in pairs.  I get dreamy looking at all the veggies, imagining what our upcoming garden will look like. We have been enjoying the tomato sauce I put by.  Opening the jars and
smelling the fresh tomatoes and basil and garlic, all at once, transports us back to August. O so good!

I have been diligent, writing a poem a day, then moving on to prose work.  The early office seems to be my best practice . . .  I feel energized and ready to take on the other work I'm doing. 

I have received 13 acceptances (poems, flash fiction, essays) since December 17th, 2012.  Some were received after 100 days, some in a fortnight, and those rare responses in a few hours. I'm so grateful to the editors at Heron Tree, The Prose Poem Project,  The Apeiron Review, The Eunoia Review, Germ, Brevity Poetry Review, Blueline, Curio, About Place Journal,The Great Lake Book Project, The Centrifugal Eye Anthology, Yes, Poetry, who have given my work ascent.