Two Poems by Alec Solomita

 

Good Intentions

 

The minutes click audibly by

like those haunted classroom

clocks of childhood

yet the days wing past like birds.

 

How was I planning to fill

this gift of time and solitude?

Learn French. Cure my gout.

Write prose. Read Proust.

 

Maybe even Don Quixote. I suppose

I shouldn’t have been surprised

as I slept till noon, watched the news

till two, missed my long-gone parents,

 

napped until the cocktail hour,

poured some wine, cooked some dinner.

Then spent the evening sipping whiskey

with British detectives.

 

 

Easter Poem 

 

I saw a fawn this morning

standing knee deep in mist.

It was a quiet dawn for a change,

the workers across the street

celebrating Easter.

 

On Easters several thousand years ago,

my mother would bake lasagna.

But first we all walked to church together,

ten of us festooned in

our awkward middle-class

finery. The girls pretty

in dresses and white petticoats

that touched the sidewalk,

the younger boys wearing ties

and thumbs in their mouths.

 

On most Easters the wind,

cold and hard, scattered

our hats in the air

and we gave chase,

laughing in the April chill.

Dad held hands with a couple of kids,

as we all strolled slowly so Mom,

“a little overweight” as her husband

would lovingly say, could keep up.

 

 

Alec Solomita is a writer and artist working in the Boston (USA) area. His fiction has appeared in the Southwest Review, The Mississippi Review, Southword Journal, and Peacock, among other publications. He was shortlisted by the Bridport Prize and Southword Journal. His poetry has appeared in Poetica, Lothlorien Poetry Journal, Litbreak, Driftwood Press, Anti-Heroin Chic, The Galway Review, The Lake, and elsewhere, including several anthologies. His photographs and drawings can be found in Convivium, Fatal Flaw, Young Ravens Review, Tell-Tale Inklings, and other publications. He took the cover photo and designed the cover of his poetry chapbook, “Do Not Forsake Me,” which was published in 2017.