mineral lit mag
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  • About/Submissions
  • Masthead
  • Featured Poets Series
    • 3 poems by Chris Prewitt
    • 3 poems by Taylor Byas
    • 3 Poems by David Hanlon
    • 3 poems by Bailey Grey
  • Issues
    • Issue 1
    • Issue 1.5: Hozier-inspired
    • Issue 2
    • Issue 3: Recovery
    • Issue 3.5: Lana Del Rey
    • Special Summer Solstice Prose Issue
    • Issue 4.1
    • Issue 4.2
    • Still Standing
  • Home
  • About/Submissions
  • Masthead
  • Featured Poets Series
    • 3 poems by Chris Prewitt
    • 3 poems by Taylor Byas
    • 3 Poems by David Hanlon
    • 3 poems by Bailey Grey
  • Issues
    • Issue 1
    • Issue 1.5: Hozier-inspired
    • Issue 2
    • Issue 3: Recovery
    • Issue 3.5: Lana Del Rey
    • Special Summer Solstice Prose Issue
    • Issue 4.1
    • Issue 4.2
    • Still Standing
Should Be Heaven

almost perfect: NYC, 20, no job no cares learning language
but I'm fleeing a host of sadnesses
cruisin' down the coast from my hometown
dancin' in the dark in the pale Columbia moonlight
(even if you're gone, Grammy)
flipping through the bookshelves at the Strand, Book Culture, still 
got that summertime: summertime sadness
high heels on, out for Italian with my classmates;
I got my red dress on tonight

kissed my parents to show them I'm okay - figure
lies are better than nothing
making friends could be easy since they won't have to keep me
(nothin' scares me anymore)

Oh, my God, I feel it in the air

puncturing this false bliss: learning to ballroom dance outside:
razor slicing away gossamer fiction, interpolating
summertime - sadness

(Think I'll miss you forever)
under the arch, we pass together, with 
visions of my girlfriends’ petty intervention playing in my head
while I wait for that flickering lifeline,
xenotransplant persisting on machines alone, to pulse out...
you never saw me in the clinic, shingles &
zero they can do for me: at this late hour.

Maria S. Picone has an MFA from Goddard College. She’s interested in cultural issues, identity, and memory. As a Korean adoptee in an Italian American family and a New Englander, her obsessions with noodles, seafood, and the ocean are hardly her fault. Her poetry appears in Homestead Review, Ariel Chart, Headline Poetry, and Route 7 Review. Her Twitter is @mspicone, and her website is mariaspicone.com.
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