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 […]

Pippi

  For the most part, my childhood nourished my creativity and sense of wonder. I feel so fortunate to have come up in a time before cell phones and social media. My knowledge of screens was limited to our old black and white TV set and the occasional movie outing. Children’s literature was a treasured […]

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 […]

(She is) Unbroken

Unbroken There were times I imagined you different. My young mother mind pictured you— normal, typical, non-disabled. I can’t use those words anymore for their opposites evoke— lack, absence, tragedy, and you, my child, are a celebration of plenty, a bounty of delight, a well of fascination. In fact, you stand against the backdrop of […]

First Digit Singular

This Is What Really Happened Trigger warnings: Run-on sentences. Querulousness.   Thirteen days ago I had my thumb joint reconstructed. This was  elective and a long time coming—both carpo-metacarpals whittled down to bone on bone, naked osseous matter grinding boorishly against its equally unclothed neighbor, hyaline cartilage having fled years ago. I chose the off […]

The Life Cycle of a Day

Bink and I walk outside a lot. We are blessed with a number of parks and nature sanctuaries in our area, and we know some of them quite well. This poem stemmed from a particular ramble early last spring. I’m pleased that Willows Wept Review chose to publish it in their fall issue.   The […]

Why Poetry Matters

I’m so pleased to share that my poem “Nobody” was published in Thimble Literary Journal today. You can read it by clicking on this link: https://www.thimblelitmag.com/2022/08/09/nobody/ My writing process is anything but logical. Sometimes it feels as if the poems begin as embryos planted in the unseen folds of my heart. Some grow in predicable […]

BE EVER SO KIND

In my nearly 30 year journey parenting my child with special needs, I’ve had much time to reflect on the juxtaposition between How I Thought Things Would Go and How Things Have Gone. How Things Are.  I revisit memories of child-me, teen-me, very-young-adult me, and wonder—what if she knew how things would unfold? What might […]

The Visitor

  In the dark, a baby fox hoists her short legs one by trembling one up the steep stairs, tripping the sensor light as she reaches the back deck in a sharp-eyed heap of gray brown fur. She toddles, adorably unsteady, across the width of composite boards, circles metal table and chairs, small nose searching […]