January 2024
Elaine Sorrentino
elaine616@hotmail.com
Bio Note: What I enjoy most about writing poetry is that its brevity allows me to capture snapshots. A full-time Communications Director, I do most of my writing on the weekend, with Food Network in the background and a jigsaw puzzle going at all times for times when words refuse to come. Ten minutes with a good puzzle and I'm off and running. My poetry has been published most recently in Sparks of Calliope, Ekphrastic Review, and Haiku Universe.

Alternate Hair
during treatment It didn’t matter who knew. I wasn’t attempting to hide my truth. This bouncy, brown, easy-to-wear mop preserved my freedom to buy groceries without cruel whispers look at the lady in the cereal aisle her dome’s smooth as honeydew in produce, it allowed me it to cling to a smidgeon of normalcy in a stretch that felt like daily ransacking; scalp enhancement staved off pity, questioning stares; this patient embraced dinner out with her sweetie, tossed aside needles and scalpels to step back into the world of the living, savoring a moment of sweet vanity.

Unfinished Jigsaw
I’m out of pieces to place in this medley of multicolored ropes, yet the patch where yellow bleeds into orange reveals the grain of the table, a giggling gaping hole mocking me; this colorful, woefully deficient puzzle as incomplete as ba-dum-dum without the ching as disappointing as knock, knock without who’s there, as unsatisfying as shave and a haircut without two bits, but boxing it up without completion is like being defeated by nine hundred ninety-nine little cardboard cut outs, like conceding that the one thousandth piece has permanently taken up residence on some factory floor.

Final Request
To avoid dying my first and second death simultaneously I scatter my literary seeds on fertile ground in hopes they’ll take root.
©2024 Elaine Sorrentino
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