Veronica Lupinacci

---

Hospital Thoughts

Looking out from the cardiac floor the caution-
orange wind sock is drunk and vomiting on the  roof, slumped
skin-naked, weeping.
My father’s tongue is a purple slug.
If I look away from the monitor, he will stop breathing.
Forty-five minutes is restful sleep, now, good. Good--
sugarfree cranberry peelback cup.
The wind sock is still drunk, but now he’s waving. A nice, sloppy,
Heyyouguuuys!
​

Full Moon

The moon was a tangerine and lifted the night.
The night sat—a gentle fog— just above the street.
I passed gates woven with southern jasmine, climbed
 
to the top of brick and iron, rested there
on the hovering night, my bed of mimosa moonlight.
The moon batted her eyes at me.  Began to thump,
 
thump, and swelled and swelled so large with each pulse
she met me right at the edge
of the hovering night. I reached up and tore
 
a scrap of her peel for myself. Squeezed and inhaled
the light oil sprayed faintly
from the pores, rubbed the fragrance on my wrists.
 
Pulled myself up onto the soft surface. Walked
in the absence of noise. Even in the blank
of space, I still thought I heard
 
the smallest music. Following the contralto song,
following faint piano— keys collapsing
like dominos just before they tap the ear
 
on the shoulder. Each step, sinking slightly into the spongy surface,
my bare feet dressed delicate in sweet tangerine oil. The face
of our moon has warm cider steam of spanish persimmon
 
lemon peach whip, yuma summer saffron garnished with vermillion
atomic tangelo zest. The cheeks of our moon are calypso honeyglow
against the cerulean steel sky. The atmosphere
 
a nervous glittering array of white
tiny blossoms. I laid down on the bottom of the moon,
the side facing earth. Sunk my fingers into pores,
 
my whole body deep in her pulp. Submerged, looking down
to the planet, on the underbelly of the moon. I could see
 
it begin to rain on earth. I could see everything else in the world
 
that slept on the hovering night go back
where it belonged on a cascade that tickled
blades of grass and made them bow, soaked
 
into the ground where dead things are kept. There should be
groves up here in no particular rows with people in hammocks swaying
among the leaves, growing sleepy, dreaming
 
of all that small music. Isn’t there
a railroad here? With a conductor in overalls and tight brimmed hat,
​     pointing
over the mountains to the place I should travel?
 
There is not. There is only
my moon and her pumping fruit heart.
​

Veronica Lupinacci's Profile

---

Polaroid Haiku: Sarasota: Summer, 1996

Tadpole-mud slimy Birkenstocks. Mosquito bite
legs. Spiny trash-leaves.
 
Summer into fall into summer into fall into
warm gulf brine.
 
Watermelon in salty waves. Rainbow sails crest
Sarasota bay.
      
Oppressive sun leaks in the blinds. AC hum kicks off.
A sweaty nap.
​

Myakka River State Park
        in Sarasota, Florida

Myakka naps in the swollen afternoon--
tips a hat-down shade to swing in wet heat sleep.
She buzzes in a swarming loom--
Spanish moss threads the scaled arms of pine trees.
 
Myakka snaps palmetto spines--
leafy garbage beds under armadillo steps--
and swims high grass and knotted vines.
She opens blue slate          cracking gossamer whips
 
across a setting pink sun
licking orange sweat
from a flickering, falling horizon.
And as her night begins to sing beneath a high, red-blinking thrumming jet,
 
I’m just waiting to boil pasta water
over a damp, kindle-needle fire.
​

South Lido Park
        in Sarasota, Florida

Tides trim the edges of Lido key
like blunt scissors cutting a paper snowflake--
every storm unfolding her new shape.
Mangroves squeeze white wet sugar between
their fingers trying to hold her
together. Seagrape leaves
like elephant ears wave the mosquitos polyphony
down australian pine trails out to her shore.
 
There was a man I’d meet on the island
in the morning when my house was still asleep.
We’d lean against his red Datsun
in the parking lot. We’d sit and smoke on the tiny cliff
where the sand broke
to the waves.

​

                                                     Snapshot Ghazal

                                     he’s on the phone smoking the pool / is empty and thumbprinted
                                     with yellow leaves/ waiting / on the crescent stone bench in the garden / i sneak a picture
 
                                     three summer-tan underpants-kids posing inside their new cardboard mickey mouse box/ all grins
                                     and legs pretzeled behind a plastic window/ i only remember because of the picture
 
                                     a man leans over a café table in bogotá and kisses a woman i was
                                     not /in the picture.
 
                                     john in his black patch sweater pouring a glass of framboise at a high-top table/ to see his face
                                     now/ i need to see his picture
 
                                     slender red woman on / a french ballet poster curling / blue letters hang
                                     in her closet / it isn’t, but i always see it as jeannie in the picture
 
                                     the boy and i on a rope bridge in myakka stake park/ why am i always looking down /
                                     and smiling in all of our pictures
 
                                     ma in ’89 sifting through a box of polaroids on the closet floor (from behind) her little
                                     white triangle t-back tan line/ my father took that picture
​

                                                             Roots
                                                                                     ~after Ilya Kaminsky

​Sanity: name of the girl who feeds the horses and holds the barn door shut in a storm.
 
House: a cigarette pack laid flat inside a rectangular lot. White box with green trim, its cardboard top the flimsy carport facing the street, its butt backed
     up to a chain-link fence along the railroad track.
 
Parade: bathwater saying goodbye to the drain
 
Spider: quiet brush of a girl’s bare knee eliciting the attention of a boy’s pinky in the next seat, one touch in an auditorium shifting positions.
 
Past: star cluster as a sack of seeds hanging from the belt of a young man walking, tiny diamonds falling through a hole in the pouch as it slaps his leg
​     with each step. He walks through the field of night, sprinkling the muddy cosmos.
 
Forgetting: not repeating
​

Comments?

***