It's so Good to See You, How Long Has it Been?
Uncle Beany on the highway with a cart-full of ice water
in plastic buckets. Slow summer burn against the tar street
curls his toes; leaves his stringy shoes with their tongues
flapping. All the fried days with ham and cheese,
they gave them out by the shelter. He stands there
with his friends. Now, you see them in their high-top
sneaker cars, with fresh designer coffee, and curled-up
dogs barking backwards through the glass. They look
through Uncle Beany for his bottled floating plastic
mermaids. He reaches down deep for the swimming polar
bear; his half-grin with few perfect white teeth;
an abandoned picket fence. Uncle Beany once on
my couch when I was seven; the cartoon-dogs racing
after the cartoon-cats, bombs tied to their tails. After-school
sun playing light games through the Harlem Venetian blinds.
He played string games, and made rabbits with his fingers
on the shadow walls by the TV set. He took small sips from
his pocket when he thought you weren't looking.
Amy Soricelli has been published in numerous publications and anthologies including Dead Snakes, Corvus Review, Deadbeats, Long Island Quarterly, Voice of Eve, The Muddy River Poetry Review, Vita Brevis, Terse Journal, Remington Review, Literati Magazine, Blind Vigil Review, Red Queen Literary Magazine and The Westchester Review. Her chapbook, Sail Me Away, was published by Dancing Girl Press in 2019. She was nominated by Billy Collins for the Aspen Words Emerging Writer's Fellowship in 2019 and for Sundress Publications "Best of the Net" in 2013. She was also the recipient of the Grace C. Croff Poetry Award, Lehman College, in 1975.