by Amy Soricelli
Darling, How I Love You Twice
The country singer says he has two eyes,
and one watches you walk away.
The other just loves you, and sees you,
and there is nothing in the blue but the blue.
I wonder if the country song is about you,
and how you have two hearts.
One you gave away on the first night we met,
and the other one in your closet named Dani.
She was wrapped in red string inside a broken box.
Her letters were fancy circles on bird stationary,
and she was smaller than her capital letters.
The ends of her sentences were inky.
The country singer says he has two hands,
and one just holds yours in his.
The other just waves goodbye, and watches you,
and there is nothing in the wave but the wave.
I wonder if the country song is about you,
and how you have two souls.
One you carry around because it’s solid,
and the other one borrowed from a great Uncle.
He came to visit you one rainy summer Tuesday
when nothing was left inside the day.
He spent the afternoon sailing leaves into a lake,
and singing country songs into your ear.
originally published in Glimpse (Fall, 2021)
Let's Raise Our Glass
The dead kids at my high school reunion did not arrive in pairs.
Mindy, on slide one, still smoking a cigarette, curls up from
laughter behind the gym walls; but it’s quieter now
with that cold beer sliding through her fingers.
I remember the time we cried on the staircase because we
loved a band so much that the beat of the drums we carried
in our hair was stronger than any love we could imagine.
Rita showed me her math tests, but now she’s slide six on the
PowerPoint with a furry dog and a cabin from camp.
We are asked to remember the sound of her voice when
she raised her hand with an answer.
Sometimes Rita would smuggle Oreos into class,
and once on a summer night, she told me she loved me.
Only I knew that Debbie’s father hit her mother.
She wrote me a loopy note in English class asking me
to go to her house after school. You’ll see for yourself, she warned.
We sat in her kitchen while her mom scrambled eggs,
and Baba Riley was playing on her stereo.
Her mother was ‘model pretty’ and told Debbie,
“This is as good as it gets, kid.”
She’s the seventh slide, holding her arms straight out.
Steve followed me through the halls like a lost puppy, offering
his Dr. Pepper and Kit Kat.
His slower eye kept watch on me, and he’d bury his anger
in basketball and little bags of pot.
You can see on the second slide how much he favored his father.
He fell asleep in class once, but woke before the bell rang.
No one knew the name on slide nine. Someone said it was Bruce
from Spanish 103, but no one could be sure. He had an impish
smile and a flannel shirt; you could almost smell the Marlboro.
Someone thought that maybe it’s Marvin from band,
but Joyce said she saw Marvin a week ago.
Mostly everyone started dancing when the slides were over,
and when Allan said they brought out more potato salad,
we all got up to look.
Amy Soricelli has been published in numerous publications and anthologies, including The Westchester Review, Deadbeats, Long Island Quarterly, Literati Magazine, Pure Slush, Glimpse Poetry Magazine, and many others. **Coming Spring/2026 – “Growing up Bronx, Dancing Girl Press. *That Plane is not a Star, 4/2024, Dancing Girl Press *Carmen has No Umbrella but Went for Cigarettes Anyway, Dancing Girl Press 9/2021 *Sail Me Away, Dancing Girl Press, 10/2019. Nominations: Pushcart Prize, 2021, “Best of the Net” 2020, 2013. Nominated by Billy Collins for the Aspen Words Emerging Writers Fellowship/2019, Grace C. Croff Poetry Award, Herbert H Lehman College, 1978