Joseph Somoza and Jill Somoza

Jill and Joe Somoza in the Organ Mountains when the poppies were in full bloom.

Joseph Somoza sends us 3 poems.

Double Talk

Sitting in my lawn chair, I’m

walking down Bush Street

toward the Fillmore, your arm

entwined in mine.

Now that we’re old enough

it doesn’t matter.  People

may think what they think.

What are we anyway,

famous?

Step outside ourselves and

notice the flowering bushes,

the Victorian facades, the old

Japanese woman walking

home with groceries.

If we lived here?

If we came from here?

If we had gone to grade school here?

If we hadn’t become

who we are?                           

  

  

Poet

He speaks nonsensical

whimsy

for the love of

hearing speech phrases

in a visible form he can

modulate, re-combine

fancifully,

evocatively,

or, just,

undermine his own

expectations, liking to hear

a possible, new

language one would

speak for no reason

but the love of

how it sounds.

                                                                          

A Million Lives

Amazing always, but especially

now in the early.

A freight train passing through town,

down the hill where

tracks lie in wait for a train

to come blow its whistle

while I sit in morning shade

under the tree, Marty, the black cat,

lying nearby, Jill watering the flowers,

the wooden picket fence as somber

as it’s ever been, unlike my

somberness that varies, often mixed

with joy, unbelief, or

other mixed feelings—colorations

that make the world seem

mine for the moment, a moment that,

at the time,

lasts forever.

Joseph Somoza

construction by Jill Somoza