January 2018
Lenny DellaRocca
lenny.dellarocca@gmail.com
I am recently retired and have been filling my time publishing SoFloPoJo — South Florida Poetry Journal and Interview With A Poet — both at southfloridapoetryjournal.com. My poems have appeared in Verse-Virtual, Nimrod, Poet Lore, Fairy Tale Review and others. I live in Delray Beach, FL with my wife, Marie.

A Book Arrives in the Mail
for Denise Duhamel

I'm sending a check.
I'm writing the history of gratitude
on the back where you'll write
“for deposit only”
in case a poor stranger finds it
should it slip from your hand,
cashes it in South Beach
where he'll skip down a neon street
arms held up to the sun
singing about theft and luck.
My check is only a portion of the payment,
there will be a festival: floats and Margaritas, 
glittering costumes, fireworks 
spelling your name around the moon;
accept the baby leopard- 
give her a name worthy of a poem,
walk her on the beach at night;
the postman with first edition Nerudas
will ask you to sign, please do so 
with those shooting stars in your little finger.

Published in Poetry Pacific, Fall, 2017



Washing Machine
 
​
I am sitting on a chair outside
in a screened patio
while my clothes swim in the machine,
tumbling, interweaving like sleeping
aunts and uncles leftover from a
New Year’s Eve party.
I’m reading Anne Sexton.
 
An air conditioner kicks on next door,
hums like a housewife dusting,
Between mobile homes,
blows of a hammer echo;
a freight train making love.
 
Across the street, an old woman
watches from her bedroom window,
moves on her cheap, creaking floor
like Eleanor Rigby waiting to leave the world.
The wind moves through the trees
a priest tip-toeing through a dark church,
the perfume of empty pews,
remaining scents of discarded
sins, clothes.
 
My family hugs me with Christian arms.
I’ve become the dirty clothes
they seek to submerge in water.
I wait for the laundry to stop its incest;
lovers waiting to be thrown to the dryer,
that metal box of hell for
clothes, sins.
"Washing Machine" first appeared in Negative Capability.
​​© 2018 Lenny DellaRocca
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