A Poem by M.J. Iuppa

Hereafter

 

In defiance of snow, she puts her shovel away in

the recesses of  her old barn, behind boxes of stuff

collected over years of wishful thinking, the odds

‘n ends of  invention  left with unread  instruction

manuals that would tell her how to use her time

wisely. She hides the shovel next to elaborate

cobwebs that appear gray and filmy, dripping

 like wisteria blossoms . . .

She looks all around and realizes that too many

 things have complicated her life. However, snow

will no longer be one of them.

 

 

 

M.J.Iuppa lives on a small farm near the shores of Lake Ontario. For the past ten years, she and her husband Peter Tonery have been committed to food sustainability. She has numerous publications (poetry, fiction, nonfiction and plays) in national and international journals as well as two full length poetry collections Night Traveler (Foothills, 2003) and Within Reach (Cherry Grove Collection, 2010) and five chapbooks; her latest prose chapbook Between Worlds (Foothills, 2013). She served as the poetry adviser (2007-2012) for the New York Foundation for the Arts, and since 1986, has worked as a teaching artist in the schools, K-12 for a variety of agencies (RCSD, BOCES 2, Young Audiences, Genesee Valley BOCES, Project U.N.I.Q.U.E. and V.I.T.A.L. Writers & Books, and others) Currently she is Writer-in-Residence and Director of Arts Minor Program at St. John Fisher College.