Melinda Coppola

twenty four may | from the inside out

Melinda Coppola

twenty four may | from the inside out

Hello out there!

The blog has been quiet this summer, but I’ve been editing and submitting work to a wide range of literary journals.

My submissions practice has been haphazard and sporadic over the past ten years. I made a commitment to send out a lot more work this year. It’s a kind of discipline, sending little pieces of my soul through the Internet to be consumed by editors I’ll never meet. Rejection is the writer’s norm, and though I’ve come to expect those generic dismissal emails, it can be disheartening. The acceptances, when they come, feel like bright little blossoms of triumph in my heart’s garden.

I’m pleased to share my poem, The Color of Swans, which has been published today in Writing in a Woman’s Voice. You can read it here:

The Color of Swans

A prism is lifted to the sun. Imagine
a million nuances of color and shine,
fractal languages of symmetry
resting perfectly
between breaths
or heartbeats.

The artist knows the power of spaces,
without which there would be no means
to shape the eye’s longing.

Musician has this same knowing,
gleaned through the eardrum’s
oscillations:  there is no song
without pauses
between notes.

Someone in your diaspora of friends
will die tonight, and in the moments
between last exhale
and the doctor’s legal declaration,

a poem is written on the window
in frost.  It lingers
only as long as two pairs of eyes can see it,

and if the heart that goes
with one pair can hear it,
a song will be born,

and if the soul that goes
with one pair can see it,
there will be a rendering
in charcoal, or paint, or crayon.

This is how life continues;
the poetry between things
must draw the attention
of some realized aspect of God,
like you,
or you,

and your near-desperate desire
to interpret the miracle
becomes the language, the love, the soil
from which
something else can be born.

 

Tomorrow, the same journal is publishing another one of my poems!  I’ll be back in your inbox then.

Thank you, my little tribe of faithful readers. I am so grateful for your support.

Warmly,

art by Melinda

 

Postscript: On 9/10/22 this poem was awarded the Moon Prize!

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