October 2017
Lisa Wiley
wileymoz@yahoo.com
I studied with Billy Collins July 2013 in the Southampton Writers Conference on Long Island.  I live with my husband, three children and two orange cats in Buffalo, NY where I teach creative writing and composition at Erie Community College.  When I'm not running, I'm writing.  My two chapbooks include My Daughter Wears Her Evil Eye to School (The Writer's Den, 2015) and Chamber Music (Finishing Line Press, 2013).

​New Nephew


He’s three stanzas tall
like a little baseball bobble head
on my lap as I hold him up.
His fingers pure poetry,
strength of their grip profound.

The curve of his button nose
clear Irish cartography.
Divinity of his dimple.
Those playful eyes
bounce to a Brooklyn beat.
 
Same red river courses our veins,
surging our family name
over slippery rocks,
into the lively rapids--
I’m a blood aunt now.
 




Making Small Talk with the Uber Driver En Route to JFK


He’ll be a different boy in a few months, I sniff.
How much is your ticket back to Buffalo?

Kozim’s dark eyes smile as he loads
our luggage, watches me cry

as I squeeze my new nephew
one last time in front of the brownstone.

$79 each way.
That’s all?  It’s so much more back to my country.

Where are you from?
Pakistan.  I go home maybe once a year.

You have a short trip—you can buy lots of tickets
to see the little baby, he marvels.

​Chin up to the late August sky, I’ll rate him
the Milky Way when we reach the terminal.
© 2017 Lisa Wiley
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