October 2024 | poetry
Post Break-up Souvenir Shopping, Naples
No to the limoncello, liquid sunshine in hand-painted glass bottles.
No to the porcelain-handled pizza cutters poised to slice a pie.
Nope to the floral-print tablecloth/napkin sets, nope to Deruta pottery blue-rimmed with lemons.
No to the prayer candles, neither Madonna and Child nor Madonna Ciccone.
No to the mother-of-pearl music boxes tinkling That’s Amore.
No to a Sexy Priests 12-month calendar— but Father August is devilishly hot!
Nope to Quentin Tarantino prayer candles— enough already.
No to Mount Vesuvius snow globes, though the ashes are quite fitting.
But to the wicker baskets brimming with little clay heads— I say Yes!
and pay three euros for the one that looks like yours.
Dreaming of the Jersey Shore
The Muffin Man woke at 4 a.m., turned on
the lights at Drury Lane. He gathered ingredients: lemons,
flour, eggs, sugar, poppy seeds, baking powder, milk, butter, salt.
It was Tuesday, a lemon-poppy seed bake.
Everyone knew The Muffin Man. Or thought they did.
In the solitude of pre-dawn, he was not above smoking a cigarette
while he stirred, flicking an ash or two into the batter.
And it wasn’t even Ash Wednesday. People didn’t know him,
only that Thursday was cherry chocolate, Friday was blueberry crumble.
Muffins weren’t the only thing crumbling.
For years now, The Muffin Man dreamed of a different life—
one where he braised osso buco at a seaside café.
Where he worked side by side with a soulmate wife
while the kids played underfoot, and his friends— those guys
he should have stayed tight with since high school—
came around on Saturday nights for a plate of oysters
and a bottle of pinot gris. Things hadn’t turned out the way he’d hoped.
He took another drag on the cigarette, greased the muffin tins.
“After the morning rush,” he said aloud to no one but himself,
“I’m going to post my profile on one of those dating sites— Binge,
or Yes, Chef, or maybe FreshCatch.com.” But The Muffin Man knew
he was all flour dust, no yeast.
He’d spend another afternoon in the safe embrace
of Zillow: commercial zone, large oven, ocean view.
Ann Weil
Ann Weil is the author of Lifecycle of a Beautiful Woman (Yellow Arrow Publishing, 2023) and Blue Dog Road Trip (Gnashing Teeth Publishing, October 2024). Her poetry appears or is forthcoming in Pedestal Magazine, RHINO, Chestnut Review, DMQ Review, Maudlin House, 3Elements Review, and elsewhere. Her poem, “Moon Child,” was nominated for a Pushcart Prize by Burningword Literary Journal and selected for inclusion in the 2024 Edition of Best New Poets. She earned her doctorate at the University of Michigan and lives with her husband and soul-dog in Ann Arbor, MI, and Key West, FL.
October 2023 | poetry, Pushcart nominee
We drank Tang, just like the astronauts,
but stopped short of breakfasting
on freeze-dried eggs. Saturdays,
Dad melted Crisco in the fryer,
dropped little meteors of batter
into the bubbles, served up fritters
with real maple syrup. Sixties kids
had it made in the shade— all-day freedom
on banana-seat bikes, Oscar Meyer
bologna sandwiches eaten on the fly,
Nestle’s chocolate chips folded
into Toll House cookie dough by Mom,
a June Cleaver clone except that she wore
capris instead of a dress, and hair statuesque
in an eight-inch beehive. Her Max Factor lipstick—
Electric Pink— always freshly applied,
the house swept, dusted, and promptly at 6,
martini’d. The family’s crisp white edges
began to curl at cocktail hour, threatened to tear
at dinner, the effort of kindness simply
too burdensome for our mission commander to bear.
As the Green Giant canned peas were passed
and the potato-chipped tuna noodle casserole
spooned out, one wrong word, an errant opinion,
an ill-timed sigh— and all planets ceased
rotation around the sun. I sat farthest away,
little brother too close. Little elbows on the table…
a big man can be a fast man. A spoon a weapon.
A woman, powerless. A moon child escapes
in her mind-made spaceship— rocketing away
to the lunar maria, their vast darkness
so perfect for hiding.
Ann Weil
Ann Weil is a past contributor to Burningword Literary Journal. Her most recent work appears in Maudlin House, Pedestal Magazine, DMQ Review, 3Elements Review, The Shore, and New World Writing Quarterly. Her chapbook, Lifecycle of a Beautiful Woman, debuted in April 2023 from Yellow Arrow Publishing. To read more of her poetry and flash fiction, visit www.annweilpoetry.com.
January 2023 | poetry
My mind is
a cluttered cupboard
a hoarder’s den
skyscraper-stacked
bits and chits
shiny scraps strident notes
on skin when there is
no room at the inn
no vacancy
for one more guest
nor even space
for oxygen
thirst is the strongman of needs
with many ways to drink
morning news with morning joe
the Times they are a-changing
podcasts preachers PSAs
Sirius no longer lit
but air-waved and ever-on
any cracks in the stacks
I fill with pages beloved
books poems of my own
and others (who I’d like to be)
all this mess
magpie-made
I’ll use it someday
but the cows stray
I’m too busy to fence
my mind is at capacity
I fear the thoughts
will overflow like the gentle man
I saw yesterday
at 4th and Main
deep in conversation
with the gentle man
in the glass of the bookstore window
Ann Weil
Ann Weil writes at her home on the corner of Stratford and Avon in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and on a deck boat at Snipe’s Point Sandbar off Key West, Florida. Her work has been nominated for Best of the Net and appears in Crab Creek Review, Bacopa Literary Review, Whale Road Review, Shooter Literary Magazine, Eastern Iowa Review, DMQ Review, and elsewhere. Her first chapbook, Life Cycle of a Beautiful Woman, will be published in 2023 by Yellow Arrow Publishing. Read more of Ann’s poetry at www.annweilpoetry.com.
