Two Poems by M.J. Iuppa

Who Knows the Answer? 

Certain friendships bring daffodils,
others, tulips.  Yours, a fistful of 

red—tight-lipped as I place them
in chilly tap water.

We sit loosely around the kitchen table,
like flowers in an accidental arrangement;

heads bent listening to stories we always
knew to be true.

Memory becomes a dream—our youth
foolishly spent — a grief that blooms  

in the forgetfulness of the hour . . .
Still, we’re here— blinking hard at

winter’s blank stare— not wanting  to say
what we miss is all who have left us. 

And so on

Clapboard houses scattered on this hushed countryside were

raised within the short distance of the road rising and falling

into the Alleghenies.  There isn’t a name for this road but people

 say it’s God’s country.  The leaves are turning shades of umber or

is it ochre? No, it’s the color of faraway, even though some refer

to it as being just down the road.  It’s the place where you end up

stopping and looking around, which is the mistake most of us make.

You can hear a soothing waterfalls and there is an abandoned paint-

blistered church with worn gray steps, inviting you to cross the gate

into paradise. Someone is expecting you . . .

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.