Sometimes...
By Maria Lisella
I pretend aging is a distant island where broken birds go to recover, to practice flying, to remember how to play. If it isn’t an island, it’s a country with one eye opened, the other shut, barring reality from taking over the show. Reader’s Digest, stalwart of mediocrity, started it all with Hi, I’m Joe’s Heart, as if giving a body part a script would shed wisdom on the inevitable passage of time, how to roll it back, keep it treading water. And now, a pandemic; and aging has become an aspirational goal.
© 2021 Maria Lisella. All rights reserved.
Maria Lisella's poems below were previously published in the Trolley journal, Summer 2020. "Sometimes..." will be featured in the upcoming Trolley journal to be published next week.
Maria Lisella was named a Poets Laureate Fellow by the Academy of American Poets in 2020.
Her collections include Thieves in the Family (NYQ Books), Amore on Hope Street, (Finishing Line Press) and Two Naked Feet (Poets Wear Prada). Recent work appears in Big City Lit, MomEgg Review, New Verse News and Shrew.
She is a travel writer by profession, co-curates the Italian American Writers Association readings, and contributes to Never Stop Traveling, The Jerusalem Post and the online bilingual La Voce di New York. https://marialisella.contently.com/