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| Alissa Sammarco |
Sometimes Tears Are The Biggest Compliment
The storm is a ways off yet.
I can see it across the parking lot.
Was I the final destination
waiting for this heat to break,
waiting for relief to fall from the sky
and christen my forehead,
smear mascara into tracks of mud
across my face.
At its the edge,
the wind moves leaves
and they make a sound that is
anxious and full of anticipation.
The air is crisp just before
the sun leaves its last kiss,
leaving me waiting
for tears that may never fall.
Mostly What I Remember Is The Ocean
The moon pulled tides across my heart
when you came back to me.
You sucked out the air from my chest
the way the bay empties before the surge,
then rolls back to the shore,
Godzilla, screeching and gnashing teeth.
You were a tsunami wave against my chest,
hitting like a belly flop off the high dive.
It was blue and flat and breathless
and I sank down as deep as the ocean.
There was no fear as I walked into the water,
my feet anchored in the storm,
and the undertow dragging me farther
and farther from shore.
At The Moment Before Tomorrow
The sky is orange and pink and yellow and blue
and the katydids ring like church bells
waiting for everything to slip away
and cross over to the other side,
like Aristotle never knew the world was round,
like Copernicus never knew the world circled the sun,
like Newton never tossed an apple up to watch it fall,
like somehow this wide flat existence,
this fleeting moment of at last
sewing sinew strings with auger
pulling together the shroud
that quiets and rests the eyes
as we hold each other.
They Have To Be Willing To Learn
Or the exercise is pointless,
ridiculous at its inception.
The childless know nothing
having never left childhood
where every day is as if it never ends
and every night is like a reboot,
the morning a clean slate
without consequences beyond nightfall,
cradle and blanket waiting
to rock-a-bye, rock-a-bye.
Then, suddenly insomnia comes
with age,
when every moment forgotten
is reborn,
when every moment reborn
is lost.
Bio:
Alissa Sammarco is a writer and attorney from Cincinnati. Her journey has taken her across the country and back home to Ohio. Alissa’s poems capture the extraordinary of everyday. In 2025, her chapbook, Moon Landing Day won the International Impact Book Award. April marks her first full length book, The Waiting room. Her works include 6 books including Italian Dinner Music (Turning Point 2025), The Waiting Room (Turning Point 2025), Cupcake Day (Turning Point 2024), Moon Landing Day (Finishing Line Press 2024), I See Them Now (Turning Point 2024) and Beyond the Dawn (Turning Point 2023) prior chapbooks and poems in Main Street Rag, Sheila-Na-Gig, Black Moon Magazine, Quiet Diamonds, VIA: Voices in Italian Americana, Pine Mountain Sand & Gravel, and elsewhere.
Instagram @AlissaSammarcoWrites; Facebook Alissa Sammarco – Writer & Poet.
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