Grey-filtered morning & no one on the street
looks happy, a few unpleasantly defiant,
the sweep of catastrophe apparent.
Maura Candela
Repeat
She was like any woman running from sudden rain,
a pretty picture, lifting to her head the cheap bouquet
she’d bought at the corner fruit store perennially
named A & J no matter who owned it. Some protection,
laughed a man running opposite. She wanted to shout
Magritte, but the rain at once came down in a clatter,
face streaming, he sprinted past her, and wit doesn’t matter
when a tree limb springs at your feet, and unable to stop,
she leaped, part of her mind absorbing knobs, green with lichen.
Trap
How ridiculous and how strange to be surprised at anything that happens in life. — Marcus Aurelius
that was a base mob wannabe move,
a Bergin Fish & Hunt Club on 101st Avenue move,
a turncoat who forgot to wear his 80’s Ozone Park overcoat move,
a he had a deal move, a farcical mob extortion move
To the God of Abraham
You
make me taste your
……………….vastness on my tongue
then dismiss me
one of many loved
……………….beneath the belly of the sun
January 6, 2021
Someone told me you were seen
running behind that beast you’d bred,
Its hide bristling in flashes ahead,
and you, in the wake of stench,
didn’t mind the slaps of slaver.
Then you saw steps, the police.
Imaging Ukraine: Poems by Maura Candela (with Photos by Emilio Morenatti)
Friday, April 22, 2022. Photo by Emilio Morenatti
Chernihiv
The caption reads, Firefighter takes a break
He sits on a swing, only thing upright
after the bombing. Hands clasped in his lap.