Millenium to Millenium
How many weeks are in a day
and how many years in a month?~ Neruda
Not of this world, mountains rise
obliquely in a winter sky, casting
shadows on sour fields that refuse
to tell me what is wrong.
I am moving— a slow flight
through language I’ve lost
to perfection.
Boxed between panes, dead bees
curled in transparent parentheses.
Soundlessly they take me
by surprise.
I am returning— a dream
coming back in springtime. I will
pick my blade from moist earth
& raise it up to the sun
& wind, and brandish it before
an affluent crowd who seem
to forget where life starts
& ends. I will face their mal-
function, without wanting
to punish them.
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 other publications. Her most recent poetry chapbook is As the Crow Flies (Foothills Publishing, 2008), and her second full-length collection is Within Reach (Cherry Grove Collections, 2010). Between Worlds, a prose chapbook, was published by Foothills Publishing in May 2013. She is Writer-in-Residence and Director of the Visual and Performing Arts Minor program at St. John Fisher College in Rochester, New York.
How many weeks are in a day
and how many years in a month?~ Neruda
Not of this world, mountains rise
obliquely in a winter sky, casting
shadows on sour fields that refuse
to tell me what is wrong.
I am moving— a slow flight
through language I’ve lost
to perfection.
Boxed between panes, dead bees
curled in transparent parentheses.
Soundlessly they take me
by surprise.
I am returning— a dream
coming back in springtime. I will
pick my blade from moist earth
& raise it up to the sun
& wind, and brandish it before
an affluent crowd who seem
to forget where life starts
& ends. I will face their mal-
function, without wanting
to punish them.
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 other publications. Her most recent poetry chapbook is As the Crow Flies (Foothills Publishing, 2008), and her second full-length collection is Within Reach (Cherry Grove Collections, 2010). Between Worlds, a prose chapbook, was published by Foothills Publishing in May 2013. She is Writer-in-Residence and Director of the Visual and Performing Arts Minor program at St. John Fisher College in Rochester, New York.