The Bitter Celebrates Mention gateways and mythologies and I see openings to paths better left unseen. No choice is choice, but preparation leads us astray as well. Take this bitter leaf. Call it arugula. Call it rocket. Call it colewort or weed. Dress it with oil and vinegar, with garlic and lemon. Add tomato, salt. […]

Mary Magdalene You know me. I am long hair and bare breast. I am a flower— a rose, a bough with thorns. I am creasing fabrics, jewels, and parted lips, a book open upon my lap or yours, a skull— cold in my hands. I am at the base of that cross in the hills […]

Gifts Why is it that, so often, we receive gifts that we are not meant to keep? Do we still thank the giver for our wild and fleeting joy? Do we steal the blessing home and make space for it on a dusty shelf? Yesterday I almost stepped on a turkey feather – brown and […]

Sliver of Power We sheltered from August steam under fluttering oak leaves, crescent moon shadows multiplying at our feet. As moon began to overtake sun, we stepped beyond shade to stand where we were scorched just moments before— it was as if we stood the same ground on a different day, twenty degrees cooler, the […]

Back I found the back entrance to the Garden of Eden It’s made by slamming doors not opening them Slam! (step back) Slam! (step) Slam! (step, turn) And there you are the unbelievability of bougainvillea the Baal Shem Tov picks up scattered alephbaits, JunoHera and the Magdalene kiss as fish and bicycles ignore each other, […]

Five Barley Loaves and Two Fish Take my small offering Make of it what you will If it can expand the whole, so be it If you need it to increase, increase it But take it anyway, it’s all I have If you need to keep it small for a time I don’t mind, it […]

Coronary Truth My friend calls to tell me he’s had a heart attack. I pace with the phone, and through my kitchen window, I see the season’s first oriole, darting along the lawn as if nothing amiss has occurred. I listen to my friend describe the pain—the trip to the e.r., the fight with the […]

Tortoise What if you were sitting, folded forward, your legs stretched out along the ground, arms splayed beneath your thighs and wrapped around your waist, fingers clasped behind your back, shoulders clamped down by your legs, face down in the dirt between your calves? If you find it hard to breathe, relax. You’re no ordinary […]

Finitude Night’s forced air leaves fire to smolder in its pit like sleep’s barter— hidden prayer offered in the veil of smoke lifting— over- head.   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. […]