A Poem from M.J. Iuppa

At Arm’s Length

 

My arm has fallen asleep.  It doesn’t know I’m still awake.

Lying beside me, strangely detached, its fingers think

to move.

                                                       Tremor of electricity—

little by little, in the dark, my arm rises up & shakes off

a dream--- its hand waves in small circles. It wants to be

a purple finch.                          

                                                    Come down from there.

It flies out of reach  . . . What else have I lost in the casualty

of sleep?

 

 

 

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.