2020

The year spent closing curtains,

mixing paint from small cans.

We sound-out the words,

and use our hands to cover our hearts.

Some people walked backwards

into each new day.

The little ones climbed walls;

restless spiders, tangled ivy.

Their teachers pasted tender pictures

of frogs and trees against a screen.

Some people turned-over in their sleep

but never closed their eyes.

The year spent counting pennies,

blessings pounded onto each rock.

Hands held against glass,

love whispered across a wire.

Some people folded hope into small squares

and buried them with their fathers.

The year spent behind the door,

behind one another, 

behind a mask.

It's over now,

this year of almost everything.

No, No, It's Still the Same

Where you lose me is in the corners of the room.

Those places that bend, 

and turn.

Where a marble might live.

They are like those spaces in your mouth 

where you forgot to tell me something I left behind.

Nothing I can shake out of you would bring 

it to the surface.

Where you lose me is at the end of the day 

when the hands fall to the side, 

or some mail gets dropped on the counter.

We pass ghostlike through the hallway,

nodding like strangers.

Nothing we say is real.

Where you lose me is when you ask,

and ask,

if everything is alright.

If it's okay today.

Did the world change-back while you were sleeping.

Amy Soricelli has been published in numerous publications and anthologies including Remington Review, Corvus Review, The Westchester Review, Deadbeats, Long Island Quarterly, Voice of Eve, Literati Magazine, The Muddy River Poetry Review. *Carmen has No Umbrella but Went for Cigarettes Anyway (Forthcoming, Dancing Girl Press 9/2021) *Sail Me Away (chapbook) Dancing Girl Press, 2019. Nominated by Billy Collins for Aspen Words Emerging Writer's Fellowship 2019 and for Sundress Publications "Best of the Net" 2020, 2013. Recipient of the Grace C. Croff Poetry Award, Lehman College, 1975.