Melinda Coppola

twenty four may | from the inside out

Melinda Coppola

twenty four may | from the inside out

Farther

I’m so pleased that my poem, “Farther”, which I share with you below, was just published in the Spring 2024 issue of Metonym Literary Journal. Metonym is a print journal, available for sale through their site at https://metonym-journal.com/ Poetry is art. While not everything written in all poems actually happened the way it reads, it’s […]

Anxiety, the unwelcome house guest (who never seems to leave).

  Agita Sometimes I think there four of us making a life inside this sweet gray house. Add the felines, we make a quirky octad. There is the me who is I poet, I mom, I carer for everything and everyone who moves within this circle–– the him and her, the furniture which claims no […]

A Tale of Two Motorists

Poem for the Pissed-Off Driver   I have a third eye that sees beyond your scowl, man-behind -the-wheel who couldn’t bear to wait when I slowed to turn right and so zoomed past, horn blaring, finding just enough time to turn and glare at me, mouth a “F*** you” before roaring off to his Clearly […]

Still, After Years

This is the Love Poem, Mid-Life for Super Guy “Who, being loved, is poor?” –Oscar Wilde Remember the night I woke moaning, ankles on fire, some ghost gripping my arches, preventing even a twitch of toes, a wiggle’s wriggle? You rolled without hesitation from the warmth of our layered nest, cast aside your beloved pillows— […]

Old into New

The Boathouses, Acrylic on canvas by Melinda Coppola   Natura Illustratio   Nature is a picture book of wisdom and example, an illustrated guide to how we could arrive, and live, and die. Take, for example, a leaf in spring. It draws from mother tree the energy it needs and not a drop more, grows […]

A Hole That Can’t Be Filled

Can you imagine being in such tremendous pain that the best path to freedom seems to be ending your life?  Feeling so hopeless or worthless that you truly believe the world would be better off without you?  We hear from family and community members and friends left shattered, wondering if anything they could have said […]

Grandma Moses Speaks to My Lengthening Years

Anna Mary Robertson Moses, aka Grandma Moses, is one of my inspirations. I do enjoy the quiet beauty of her landscapes that hearken back to what many consider simpler times, but what really captivates me is her story.   Grandma Moses was 78 years old when she began painting in earnest— a fact that has […]

Rhyming to Death

I started writing poetry when I was 8 or 9. My first notebooks were full of rhyme, crude as it may have been. Over the years my writing morphed into rambling narrative free verse. From time to time I enjoy a quick dip back into the rhythmic river of rhyme. It feels playful to me […]

Through Emerald Eyes

1. I saw an army of righteous green soldiers, spines erect, facing away from the wind to trick the opposition into doubting their strength. 2. Another day, a thousand brushes— great green swaths of them, moist and willing to receive dust from coats of dogs, little bunnies, the neighbor’s insolent white cat. 3. Who’s to […]

Hush

I’m pleased that my poem, ” Hush”, was published in Amethyst Review today.   Hush Is it by aging alone that I landed in this sparse, harsh forest, where most branches are sharp, all bark is sandpaper, and even the birds., diligently practicing their scales, can sometimes shake my equilibrium, scrape my eardrums with their […]