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Cover design by JanK
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Waxing Gibbous Moon
The man in the moon tilts his head
turns it ever so slightly to his right.
Wisps of clouds form his thin veil.
All’s well up here, he suggests
and the cloud-veil drops down
around and below his round pink head
Such a bright light—
I can write by it on
the page of
this notebook.
November in the Eastern Time Zone
Here is gray sky
here is purple—
Here are streaks of pink along the horizon
here are black tree branches—
Here are houses wearing dirty clapboards
leathery oak leaves flattened in the street,
crumpled maple leaves, shunted by the wind
dusk at four o’clock
Here is night arriving early
like an old woman wanting something to look forward to
winter in the wings, adrenaline surging
ready to take center stage.
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Remembering Mom’s Death Day
My sister speaks over the landline in her morning voice
She says say it’s been twenty years to the day
Since we realized Mom wouldn’t live forever—
Since she met her expiry date. We thought
she’d live to ninety, keep sharp with bridge, line dancing.
But she folded her cards, stopped reading her fat novels
kicked her dancing shoes to the back of the closet.
She quit having cocktails with her few surviving friends.
From her sickbed she called for Dr. Kevorkian—only half in jest.
Her lips were dry, her mouth filled with white gunk.
We wiped her gums with a wet cloth, smoothed her forehead.
She waited till the needles started to fall off the Christmas tree,
The children back at school, to give up the ghost.
We buried her ashes at the old Methodist church.
When All the Barber Shops Were Closed
You hadn’t let me touch your hair like that
since the time you were in kindergarten.
That first year of shutdown you tired
of buzzing your hair with the electric razor.
We spread an old sheet on the floor—
you held a towel around your shoulders.
The afternoon light was perfect.
I held the dark locks, snipped off the ends.
I loved the feel of your hair, the sound
of the scissors
the cuttings dropping onto the sheet.
When you got home you thanked me in a text
but I was the one who owed you thanks.
You who sometimes kept yourself so much apart
had let me get close again, if only for an hour.
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Lynne Viti © 2023
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Click title to download PDF microchap
Cover photo: Near Louisburg
holiday cottages by author
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Every microchap
may be downloaded for free
from this website.
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In Louisburgh, County Mayo, Thinking About Dublin
The smell of burning peat in this steady morning rain
suggests a memory out of reach, something from years ago
when I got the notion to drain my small savings account,
head for Ireland, once final exams were read, grades in,
textbooks collected, counted, accounted for, our bosses
satisfied that the City of Stamford had gotten its due.
I was twenty-six, marriage in shreds, divorce papers drawn up—
I was seeking a different self, a poetic self.
I stayed a week in Dublin, wandering the paths Joyce describes.
Each day I distracted myself from the hole in my life,
went to the Abbey, met an American actor, a minor
figure on the Broadway stage who took me to an after-hours place
frequented by the Dublin theatre crowd— I could’ve sworn
when we knocked and the actor whispered the password,
the man who peeked out and opened the door was Milo O’Shea—
The actor and I drank Jameson’s neat, sipped it slowly.
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In Boyle, County Roscommon, town of my great grandmother,
I wandered the cemetery, searching for the Sheekey graves.
The headstones from the days of the Great Hunger hid in the high grass.
I rented a small red Ford, drove across Ireland,
slowing down, stopping often for the sheep, accepting waves
from old farmers as I shifted into first gear, on to the next village
stopping each night to find a room and perhaps supper—
Supper identical to breakfast, eggs and rashers,
Brown bread and white, tomato, tea, lashings of butter—
I ate too much and drank the Guinness, which fattened me up--
I outsized my waistbands. I was growing in my grief:
Instead of wasting away. I came home a stone heavier,
a bottle of Jameson’s in my duty-free bag.
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Lynne Viti © 2019
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Cover: Sheep on Achill Island
Flickr.com
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Every microchap
may be downloaded for free
from this website.
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Hollyhocks
A flower from an English cottage garden,
a sixteenth-century word hard to wrap the tongue around,
six-foot–tall stalk with colored orbs, the best one maroon
so dark it fades into licorice black.
We stood on our godmother’s wooden back porch,
looking towards the alley that ran alongside her yard.
In narrow garden beds that lined the concrete walkways,
tomatoes prospered in the city heat.
From our wading pool we watched the hollyhocks, tall as men.
They loomed week after summer week
as each bright green bud awaited its turn
to open into a flower with a five-inch span.
We checked them every day, tracked their progress,
counted the bees and butterflies that poked into those flowers.
They weren’t staked or pruned— we never saw anyone
turn a hose on them, or stand over them with a watering can.
They took care of themselves until late September
when their spent blossoms hardened
into fat seed pods stuffed with black disks.
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Highbush Blueberries
Alone, I put in an hour’s work for a scant pint.
Together, probing branches for the
blue-black gems,
we could harvest enough for three or four pies.
We city girls never picked berries— our mother
sent us to Girl Scout camp to swim, for fresh air,
or perhaps it was just to get us out of her hair
in the dog days of August, her time to laze,
reading paperback mysteries till midnight.
I miss you here, picking berries with me,
finding that laughter with me, the giggles
that spawned more, and more, until
we held our sides from laughing?
Where’s it gone,
that easy bond between two sisters,
one shy but bossy, one always ready for a fight?
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Lynne Viti © 2019
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Cover: Stylized view
of river Cam
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Punting
Elvis had just died in Memphis—he was just forty-two.
You and I’d just moved in together,
to a third floor walkup in Brookline.
We were just in Cambridge for a couple days,
long enough to rent a punt,
travel up the River Cam for just a few lazy hours.
I lay back in the boat while you pushed the pole,
I read aloud the King’s obit from the Herald-Trib.
Just the two of us on a calm Tuesday,
drifting, then and later, back home,
for a short while, not quite in love,
just close, a stepping stone
was what we had, just enough for then,
a short prelude to our separate lives.
Now, a fragment of that day
comes back: your boyish laugh,
your golden curls glinting in the English sun.
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At Dusk
In the middle-aged heart
joy can bounce around, flow out
as blood moves through the arteries,
But despair can get stuck.
The two engage in battle:
joy enlisting hope, bliss, contentment--
despair conscripting doubt and anger.
A vessel of the heart might rupture.
If I could grow the joy, I’d share it.
If I could exterminate the despair
I would patent my invention.
Tomorrow, let’s watch the last bits of sun,
orange light fading behind the trees.
I’ll take your hand, we’ll laugh together.
This is what we'll do before night falls.
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Lynne Viti © 2017
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