Melinda Coppola

twenty four may | from the inside out

Melinda Coppola

twenty four may | from the inside out

About My Blog

I started this blog to quiet the voices in my head and heart that have been whispering and cajoling and sometimes yelling at me to write more.

This is a space where all the parts of me—mother, poet, wife, lover of beach stones and furry creatures and frequent toe-dipper in the river of song, Yoga practitioner, and teacher and she-who-cooks and she-who-makes-art and she-who-loves-silence, where all the parts of me can come out to play.

I started this blog to keep myself engaged in dialogue with my soul. If what I write interests you, educates you, moves you, …well, that’s a beautiful bonus.

Most Recent Blog Post

New Poem Published

I’m pleased that one of my pieces, “Honeymoon”  was just published in Last Stanza Poetry Journal. The journal is available in hardcover, softcover, and on Kindle.  Last Stanza is a beautiful journal, so if you’ve any interest in poetry for yourself or as a gift for someone special, please consider ordering a copy.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0D28R69VQ/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&dib_tag=se&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.wY0A1oXJxC9H52BkfBJe2CtaMRH1CveI2fvY0_G7fn8.Mup6ucmLiTO910-CxspaHeIT7nqHv9qTyZSSK736WK8&qid=1713626398&sr=1-18

The poem:

 

Honeymoon

Across the Kenyan plains,
armies of fine golden dust
rose and swarmed around every living thing,
clung to skin and lips,
tongue and cornea,
the camera’s shuttered eye.

Who can say when a marriage begins or ends?
There are no dreams here,
she might have thought, no poems.
at night under the mosquito netting,
perhaps she watched his back rise and fall,
didn’t sleep but mourned the years ahead.

Three decades later, she excavated
a brown book of photos, met
a man and a woman, young and familiar,
hats angled away from the dust or each other.

Against a backdrop of zebras grazing,
with elephants walking in the distance,
the two squinted straight into the lens,
the haze already coming between them.

 

–Melinda Coppola

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Read More Blog Posts

Me and My Shadow Go to Market

It is May 2020, still early in The Covid Times. We take ourselves to the market, by which I mean our whole selves, me in my layers of self-consciousness— the run of the mill kind that most of us don without thought— she baring all, as usual: no pretense, nothing

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LATELY

The ground seems foreign, new roots and stones anchored in the middle of familiar paths, and my feet stumble more, much more. Are you stumbling too? Such heavy air, a downward press on the shoulders makes it hard to look up, check out the sky. I can’t speak for you,

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When the Beginning is also the Ending

I haven’t done a lot with poetic forms. Something inside of me chafes at the notion of trying to fit the body of a poem, beating heart and all, into a prescribed number of lines or a particular shape or meter. I did enjoy this exploration of palindrome verse, though,

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Medicament

Medicament This morning’s waking, tight and tender to the touch, felt like neck ache, and all along the spine of this day my heart climbed and slid, ridge-riding the grief and uncertainty of these past months, pushing up towards bone-like pinnacles, vertebraic protrusions of more bad news— illness and violence,

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Gifts and Visitations

It’s been just over a month since my dear friend and soul sister Marina died, after a quick and nasty tussle with appendiceal cancer. She visits my consciousness daily, in ways both fleeting and substantial. We talked a lot about the afterlife in her last months. She told me clearly

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Dragonflies

As I write this, my dear friend Marina lies dying in a lovely room inside the oldest house in an historic and pretty New Hampshire town. A wonderful woman who worked with her in the local general store has taken her into her home. Hospice has set her up well

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Little Big Thing

“Stay in awe of life. The little things are the big things. “ ― Richie Norton “I’m cold.” Bink had just gotten up, a good hour later than she used to get up on any given pre-Covid Monday. My eyes scanned her body, noting the hybrid pajamas I’d hastily grabbed

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Time, Place, Classroom

WHEN The world gets so noisy. Too many voices straining, pushing past their natural limits to be heard. Our small ears can’t discern provenance or factuality. Reactions quicken, turning knee-jerk, protective. WHERE There is the place where trees thicken into extended families, root systems entwined beneath the earth. Look for

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Collateral Sorrow

It’s been a time of times, a steady landslide of uncertainties. Yes, the Covid, the shutdown. Yes, Bink and so many other adults with disabilities being home all day every day for many weeks, with all the usual programs and activities canceled. Yes, the mass suffering and loss that has

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