Amy Barone
Amy Barone’s new poetry book, Defying Extinction, was released by Broadstone Books in 2022. New York Quarterly Books published her collection, We Became Summer, in 2018. Her chapbook, Kamikaze Dance, was published by Finishing Line Press, which recognized her as a finalist in their 2014 New Women’s Voices Chapbook Competition. Foothills Publishing released her first chapbook, Views from the Driveway, in 2008.
Her poetry has appeared in Live Mag!, Local Knowledge, Muddy River Poetry Review, New Verse News, Paterson Literary Review, Sensitive Skin, and Standpoint (UK), among other publications. She spent five years as Italian correspondent for Women's Wear Daily and Advertising Age. Barone participates at spoken-word events in New York City, New Jersey, and Philadelphia. She belongs to the Poetry Society of America and the brevitas online poetry community. From Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, she lives in New York City.
Survivors
Cahows re-emerged on Bermuda’s Nonsuch Island
after a 300-year absence. They thrive amid
native flora, wildlife, and limited access to man.
Tangier Island in the middle of Chesapeake Bay
supplies the world with soft-shell crab.
Where water defines life, where home and country matter.
The piping plover, hailed one day each summer
for its resurgence in the Rockaways, New York,
lives protected in camouflaged nests on the beach.
Shadowboxing Arctic hares, clinging jellyfish, bonebeds
and badlands on Fossil Freeway in South Dakota.
Me—I’m the woman with medicine in her voice
a forest bather mating like a corpse plant, melting into time,
floating toward a twelfth life like a trumpeter swan.
Defying Extinction
The ribbon will be massive.
Proof that no lady died in vain.
I add a piece of sky-blue fabric from bedding
my late mother sent me as a housewarming gift.
Others brought cherished family linens, baby clothes,
and delicate doilies. A writer weaved in a purple silk blouse
to create a memorial that will hang along the Brown Building
in Lower Manhattan, where 146 garment workers
at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory perished in a fire
on March 25, 1911—one of the nation’s worst work disasters.
We honor mothers, wives, sisters, daughters and friends, plus 17 men,
who worked with their hands, mostly immigrants in a new land.
Escape blocked by locked exits and stairwells. Their sacrifice propelled
activism, dignity for workers, remembering.
Swimming on the Moon
A yellow ribbon of angst floats above.
During the lockdown, some spent days
baking bread, while a friend nearly starved
to death—driven to the ER by fear and seclusion.
A magnet for benign and wicked misfits,
I pull a mask over distress, pluck thorns
from my sides, and spend fitful nights
asleep with people still in my system.
Now that water’s been spotted there,
I think I’ll head to the moon for a swim,
embrace lunar life off the grid, get revived
on a smooth intergalactic ride, as I wave goodbye
to bugling elk, dazzles of zebras, and dozing cuttlefish.
We Became Summer
Long before we needed protection,
we formed tribes and picked a chief.
First-borns have a knack for stirring idolatry.
Bike rides energized us on innocent mornings.
The sun perfumed our fresh skin,
before self-awareness replaced laughter
and possession replaced play.
At dusk, seduction set in.
Bruises faded and mosquitoes fled.
Lightning bugs appeared, as beer-soaked dads
threw teen neighbors into backyard swimming pools
and we invited boys into the playhouse shed,
before ennui replaced embracing fear of the unknown.
Lessons Learned from Moths
I learned the art of detachment
from a destructive pest romanticized by poets
whose origins go back millions of years.
Celestial nomads that feast on leather, wool, silk, felt
and thrive on night taught me to let go of longing—
animals stuffed with memories, dolls from a distant dad,
an embroidered coat from Gimbel’s.
When I returned to my late mother’s home,
white larvae covered elegant outfits.
Soles fell from Ferragamo pumps.
Moths cunningly coached me to occupy now,
not dwell in closets lined with past lives
nor focus on nostalgia tarnished by death and deceit.
When in Italy
Feel beautiful in Rome.
Grab a bike and get happy in Ferrara,
the planned Renaissance city.
Retrace Joyce’s steps in Trieste
and feel the splash of the Adriatic’s far north reach.
Get mystic in Ravenna where East meets West
and Byzantine mosaics adorn centuries’ old cathedrals.
Work hard in Milan where serious Italians
operate on Swiss time. Greet my cousins in Teramo
where hills shrouded in gold harbor lamb and mushrooms.
Uncover Italy’s true masterpieces in Positano—
sea and sky and rock—and then indulge in heaping
plates of spaghetti con vongole,
pledge to stay forever and never go back.
Rio (The Way I See it)
Hot pink is the color of Brazil,
but green is the color of Rio,
a tropical urban jungle pulsing with life.
Yellow is for flickering lights from the favelas
that hug lush mountains, where poverty, drugs and samba mingle.
Blue is for swank homes in artsy Santa Teresa district,
where few workers speak other languages,
preferring to communicate in smiles and laughter.
White is for Cristo Redentor with arms outstretched and oversized heart
who protects cariocas alongside city patron Sao Sebastiao.
Black is the color of rosary beads that dangle from taxi mirrors
promising safety on and off the road,
the only jewelry we dare wear in this dangerously fun town.
