Everyday Life M.J. Iuppa Micro-Fiction

pages Everyday Life

by M.J. Iuppa

Published in Issue No. 285 ~ February, 2021

The aura of calm: January’s sun streams in her kitchen window.

A nuthatch, poised upside down on the feeder, chisels away at

the new brick of cherry suet. There is a stillness in the room.

The gray cat stares intently into light’s cool blues and yellows.

The house plants need to be watered. She mustn’t forget. She

fills the clay pitcher with tap water and begins to move along

the sills filled with plants. This is poetry, she thinks, turning

her wrist deftly, allowing the slow spill of water to sink into

the dry soil. It happens— without surprise: Monday.

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M.J. Iuppa is the Director of the Visual and Performing Arts Minor Program and Lecturer in Creative Writing at St. John Fisher College and since 2000 a part-time lecturer in Creative Writing at The College at Brockport. Since 1986, she has been a teaching artist, working with students, K-12, in Rochester, NY, and the surrounding area. Most recently, she was awarded the New York State Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Adjunct Teaching, 2017. She has four full-length poetry collections, This Thirst (Kelsay Books, 2017), Small Worlds Floating (2016) as well as Within Reach (2010) both from Cherry Grove Collections; Night Traveler (Foothills Publishing, 2003); and 5 chapbooks. She lives on a small farm in Hamlin NY.