Tag: Joan Mazza

ONE ART’s Top 25 Most-Read Poets of 2024

~ ONE ART ~ 2 Comments

ONE ART’s Top 25 Most-Read Poets of 2024

  1. Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer
  2. Betsy Mars
  3. Donna Hilbert
  4. Abby E. Murray
  5. Robbi Nester
  6. Julie Weiss
  7. john compton
  8. Tina Barry
  9. Timothy Green
  10. Kim Addonizio
  11. Andrea Potos
  12. Kari Gunter-Seymour
  13. Callie Little
  14. Alison Luterman
  15. Robin Wright
  16. Sally Nacker
  17. Trish Hopkinson
  18. Christina Kallery
  19. Vicki Boyd
  20. Terri Kirby Erickson
  21. Susan Vespoli
  22. Bonnie Proudfoot
  23. Scott Ferry & Leilani Ferry
  24. Martha Silano
  25. Joan Mazza

Note: Some poets were published multiple times in ONE ART in 2024. Links are to each poet’s most-read poem(s) of the year.

On the Cusp of Equinox by Joan Mazza

~ ONE ART ~ 2 Comments

On the Cusp of Equinox

Summer ends with a chill over the garden,
breath of coolness to make the spinach
and lettuce happy. I pick another bucket
of tomatoes, more chewed each harvest,
and welcome the wildlife to this messy table

of green beans and ragged rapini.
For this season, I’m all canned out. Done
with boiling jars in a steamy kitchen,
done with tomatoes bubbling, and washing
seeds from the food mill. I’m giving away

the rest of the squash and tomatoes.
Go ahead, call me wasteful, Ma.
You can say I’m crazy. Again. This time
I mean it when I shake my head. I can’t eat
another tomato. The freezer is loaded

with green beans and squash soup.
Let the deer and groundhogs feast.

*

Joan Mazza worked as a microbiologist, psychotherapist, and taught workshops on dreams and nightmares. She is the author of six psychology books, including Dreaming Your Real Self. Her poetry has appeared in Atlanta Review, The Comstock Review, Prairie Schooner, Slant, Poet Lore, and The Nation. She lives in rural Virginia.

Immune to Nostalgia by Joan Mazza

~ ONE ART ~ 1 Comment

Immune to Nostalgia

I’m not. I go back to ride
memories as if they were
peak experiences
of transcendence, pleasure—
the old summer bungalow
in Sound Beach, alone
with mother,
unlimited time to read
and read, and walk
the wooded paths
that are no longer.
Time to linger and watch
squirrels. No car or phone,
nowhere to be
except home for supper
and my mother’s cooking.
Clams or scungilli,
fresh from the sea,
over linguine. Wild
raspberries picked
in a thicket on the next
property, boiled into jam
and jarred for sweetness
during Brooklyn winters.
Even now, I try to grasp
that flavor in the air.
Some insomniac nights,
from the screened porch
I ride the thermals,
inhale the warm scent
of wet summer’s dark
and watch fireflies
flash in synchrony.
My button pendant
Life Protect 24/7
blinks back
with equal ardor.

*

Joan Mazza worked as a medical microbiologist, psychotherapist, and taught workshops on understanding dreams and nightmares. She is the author of six books, including Dreaming Your Real Self (Penguin/Putnam). Her poetry has appeared in The Comstock Review, Prairie Schooner, Slant, Poet Lore, and The Nation. She lives in rural central Virginia.

Three Poems by Joan Mazza

~ ONE ART ~ Leave a comment

Those Big Numbers

I like tables at Farmer’s Markets
or textbook color plates of the varieties
of fruits and vegetables—

4,000 species of potatoes
10,000 species of tomatoes
7,500 of apples

4,000 chile peppers, 50,000 of all kinds.
A whopping 350,000 known types
of beetles. More found every day.

How many trees? How many lichens
and slime molds? The world is abundant
with varieties, each with its own flavor, texture,

purpose. How many kinds of unique
people? Surely more than the Zodiac’s
charts or sixteen types for Myers-Briggs.

I love big numbers—galaxies and stars
in the universe, habitable planets, light
years to travel to any of them.

Over five thousand books in my house,
and I’m still buying. Still reading.
I haven’t read half.

These odd factoids give me a sprinkle
of joy, a sense that all is right in this world.
The crows chatter, indifferent to the news.

*

Late to Badassery

No one has ever called me
reckless or impulsive. I’ve never
been wild by others’ standards,
have kept my wildness caged,
corralled, tamped, and tamed.

For once, I’d like to let loose, dye
my hair pink or purple, wear orange
polka dots with purple stripes, don
a crazy, outrageous hat like Carmen
Miranda. After turning invisible,

I’d like to turn heads for a change,
have people wonder if I’m insane
or dangerous when I talk out loud
to myself in public, purchase a cart
full of cookies and ice cream.

What would happen if I gave
voice to my thoughts, said the things
I shouldn’t say, let my inner volcano
erupt with lava and pyroclastic flow?
I’m too staid, predictable, dependable,

too steadfast and available for my own
good. Don’t train me by saying you can
count on me. Don’t be surprised when
I’m out of character, a bit deranged.
You’ve been warned.

*

Imagining a Road Trip

I can see myself packing the car,
working from a list I’ve prepared
so I don’t forget rain boots and hat,
or the chargers for my iPhone, iPad,
and laptop. I like the notion of heading
west, no destination, except toward
mountains. No one to answer to, no one
who expects me to explain my choices.

I bring a stack of books, notebooks, some
of them old and already full of ideas
and flagged with Post-Its. Since most
motels have microwaves, I could bring
frozen homemade foods in a cooler
so I wouldn’t have to eat fast food
on the way. The call to drive and drive
comes to me in early morning darkness

as it did that year I took care of my mother
while she was dying when I wanted to run
away from the life I’d chosen, however
temporary. Even to me, this seems odd—
this desire to run. What would I be
running from? I live alone. My last dog
died, as did my two indoor cats. The feral
felines would miss their twice daily meals,

and they are not a burden, never waking me
or finding fault. I do as I like, buy whatever
I want, fill my bedroom surfaces with books
I’ll read next. No one interrupts or presses
me to show up where I don’t want to be.
What am I longing for that seems out there
waiting after a couple of hundred miles
on an open road? Old as I am, my cravings
and hungers are still mysterious.

*

Joan Mazza has worked as a medical microbiologist, psychotherapist, seminar leader, and is the author of self-help psychology six books, including Dreaming Your Real Self (Penguin/Putnam). Her work has appeared in Crab Orchard Review, Prairie Schooner, The MacGuffin, Poet Lore, Slant, and The Nation. She lives in rural central Virginia.

ONE ART’s Top 10 Most-Read Poets of November 2023

~ ONE ART ~ 2 Comments

~ ONE ART’s Top 10 Most-Read Poets of November 2023 ~

  1. Donna Hilbert – Tongues
  2. Luanne Castle – Traveling to Visit Mom with My Bad Knees
  3. Amy Small-McKinney – As to me I know of nothing else but miracles, Walt Whitman
  4. Kate Young Wilder – Three Poems
  5. Alison Luterman – Accompanying My Friend to Chemo
  6. Bonnie Proudfoot – Flight
  7. Robbi Nester – Feast
  8. Joan Mazza – Midnight Chaos
  9. Sarah Browning – Four Poems
  10. Deborah Bacharach – A Fine Appendix

Midnight Chaos by Joan Mazza

~ ONE ART ~ 2 Comments

Midnight Chaos

Again I’m back at Twin Oaks,* wanting to fit in,
be useful. But I’ve spilled olive oil – a lot of it—
on a new rug and I’m trying to clean it up.
The soy sauce is in a flimsy plastic bag,
unmanageable and heavy. Someone’s pushing
cars out of a second story window to let them
crash below. A nearby shelf with old lanterns
shakes, about to fall and smash. Some people
are going swimming but the sea is in the shade.
I’m chilled, want to lie down on a picnic table
that’s in the sun, but too close to shore. Oh, no!
A cow and a goat are loose in the kitchen.
And now I’m working again as a microbiologist
in a hospital. No one trains me or tells me what
to do. I see urine cups on the counter and decide
I’ll plant them on agar, but I don’t see the book
for recording specimens, don’t know the next
number. Someone says they don’t use numbers,
but write the patients’ names on the Petri plates.
Even in this dream, I wonder how one would
distinguish the patient’s plates set up from different
sources. I’m to write a number on each patient’s
face, but the marker doesn’t work. A patient laughs
with me at this absurdity. What a mess the counters
are. No blood agar plates, no set procedures.
I’m confused, dismayed, but not afraid. Am I shunned?
I wake up tired, but I can’t be fired or evicted.

*Twin Oaks Community, www.twinoaks.org

*

Joan Mazza has worked as a medical microbiologist, psychotherapist, and taught workshops nationally on understanding dreams and nightmares. She is the author of six self-help psychology books, including Dreaming Your Real Self (Penguin/Putnam). Her poetry has appeared in The Comstock Review, Potomac Review The MacGuffin, Slant, Prairie Schooner, Poet Lore, The Nation, and many other publications. She lives in rural central Virginia.

Four Poems by Joan Mazza

~ ONE ART ~ Leave a comment

Kinchy*

That guilty feeling when you hear that a typhoon
and flood has killed hundreds, left thousands
homeless, and you realize you’re more concerned
about your book stacks collecting throughout
the house, becoming obstacles to cleaning.
You know people are running for their lives,
caught in crossfire, malnourished and cold,
but your petty concerns remain in foreground,
your small donations toward aid no more
than Band-Aids over shotgun wounds. Your guilt
simmers below your surface calm, turns you
irritable and angry without a focus or plan, yet
without the force to propel you take action or effect
a shift away from your part in climate change
or the dearth of science education. So you sit
in this discomfort, frozen, focused on the trivial,
pondering how to proceed with your library’s
reorganization, where to place another bookcase.

*From The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows by John Koenig

*

Nementia*

The effort you put forth as you scramble
mentally to pinpoint the source of your anxiety,
the dark feeling vibrating at the periphery
of your awareness as you go about your
ordinary tasks, wondering if the noise
in the heating system is the first sign
of a major breakdown, or mice moving
inside since the temps are below freezing.
That quickened heartbeat and sudden sweat
was perhaps caused by a word on the radio,
an adjective generating a cascade of associations,
triggering an old anger or alarm. It spurs
your jaw and shoulder muscles to tighten,
as if a stray crow were nesting, collecting
twigs on your shoulder, whispering a recitation
of all the harsh words you said to innocent
others you will never find to make apologies.
You try to retrace the progression of thoughts,
backtracking through a morass of sticky connections,
like trying to remove bubblegum from a child’s hair
when only scissors will help, an effort that leaves you
disoriented, bumbling, in need of a long nap
and three Milano mint cookies.

*From The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows by John Koenig

*

Jouska*

When it’s too quiet for too long,
when my mind isn’t full of worries
about characters in the latest novel
I’m reading— Will these college
boys be arrested or redeemed?
How will they live with guilt?

When I’m overtired or can’t sleep
past midnight or I’m alert at 3 AM,
I go back forty years, articulate
precise words, reply by saying
NO, hold onto my NO, no matter
the pressure to surrender

to his will, his demands for money
I don’t owe, favors he shouldn’t
be asking. In these conversations
I’ve rewritten and replayed
a thousand times, I say,

I’m your patient. You’re out of line.
What you’re asking is immoral,
unethical, and against the law.

and I walk out, never to return.
I’m on the edge of my final say,
on the cliff of resolution, letting go,
opening my fist to drop this fixation.
I hear the splash, watch it sink deep,
never to be heard again.

*Jouska. Noun. a hypothetical conversation you compulsively
play out in your head.

From The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows by John Koenig.
Pronounced “zhoos-ka”

*

Liberosis*

I’d like to start a day uninterested in checking the news
on three sites, indifferent to what I missed while sleeping,
not wondering what human or planetary disaster unfolded
while I traversed dreamland. How easy it once was to be
absorbed counting my books and pairs of earrings,
at most worried about car problems instead of empathizing
with refugees and the homeless living in boxes. I’d like
to play Frisbee on the beach, walk for miles without
a destination, retrace my steps to find my way home
without a phone or map. I wish to be lifted from the pain
of past blunders of choosing critical, dominating men
because they felt familiar. I could become one of those
who says, “I have no regrets. Everything that happened
made me who I am,” as if they’re proud of turning into
a snobby tyrant. Wouldn’t it be lovely to wake each day
with a focus on hikes in the woods, painting en plein air
on the back deck, reading Dickens. No radio or podcasts
about managing grief or listing climate change horrors
to come, nothing about classified documents or cover-ups.
Oh, to be completely unperturbed by news of shootings,
mass graves discovered, sexual assaults, the cyclone
approaching a coastal community with a ten-foot
storm surge. I could buy a deluxe set of Wilton cake
decorating tips like the one I gave away years ago,
still new in the box. I could make chocolate cupcakes
look like roses, dahlias, and blooming cacti.

Liberosis.* Noun. The desire to care less about things;
to figure out a way to relax your grip on life and hold it loosely
and playfully.

From The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows by John Koenig.

*

Joan Mazza has worked as a medical microbiologist, psychotherapist, and taught workshops nationally on understanding dreams and nightmares. She is the author of six self-help psychology books, including Dreaming Your Real Self (Penguin/Putnam). Her poetry has appeared in The Comstock Review, Potomac Review The MacGuffin, Slant, Prairie Schooner, Poet Lore, The Nation, and many other publications. She lives in rural central Virginia.

Reading a Memoir Takes Me Back by Joan Mazza

~ ONE ART ~ Leave a comment

Reading a Memoir Takes Me Back

I knew before buying—
this memoir was authored
by the elder daughter of my
high school best friend, my maid-
of-honor, a mother who disappeared
from her daughters’ lives
to follow Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh.
How heartbreaking to read
of what it felt to be a child
shuttled to live with
a single father, a man
I remember, also unprepared
for parenting, but who stepped
up to do his best. How did
my friend fall for that carrot
of enlightenment? How
was she bamboozled
into believing going to India¬
and leaving her children
was a good idea?

It was the 1970s,
era of false promises
in tie-dye and disco dancing,
gurus and expanding freedoms
like a widening tornado
lifting us up into
what?
I flew only as far as Florida
to be psychoanalyzed
and made whole, not
re-broken. I didn’t know
it was a cult. Neither of us
landed safely until decades
later. I write to the author,
send her photos of her
tall and beautiful mother
in high school.

*

Joan Mazza worked as a medical microbiologist, psychotherapist, and taught workshops on understanding dreams and nightmares. She is the author of six self-help psychology books, including Dreaming Your Real Self. Her poetry has appeared in The Comstock Review, Prairie Schooner, Slant, Poet Lore, One Art, and The Nation. She lives in rural central Virginia and writes every day.

How It Ends by Joan Mazza

~ ONE ART ~ Leave a comment

How It Ends

Think of those scenes I’ve wanted to replay,
to talk back, set him straight. Yes, to defend
my outrage without being called defensive.
He wanted me on call all night and day:
Take care of my dogs. Go check on my mother!
I wonder how many patients and other
saps were taken in, apprehensive
of his spouted diagnoses. Who sends
condolences to his beleaguered wife
after a long illness has taken his life?
What about his live-in girlfriend, Kathy?
From photos, you’d guess they all were happy.
Now the argument ends inside my head.
No more obsessing? I know he’s dead.

*

Joan Mazza worked as a medical microbiologist, psychotherapist, and taught workshops on understanding dreams and nightmares. She is the author of six books, including Dreaming Your Real Self. Her poetry has appeared in The Comstock Review, Prairie Schooner, Slant, Poet Lore, and The Nation. She lives in rural central Virginia and writes every day.

Fargin by Joan Mazza

~ ONE ART ~ Leave a comment

Fargin

At last, a term for the opposite
of schadenfreude, Yiddish word
for a joyful feeling of sharing in
another’s happiness, success,
and wealth. Instead of taking
pleasure in another’s scandal
and humiliation, we celebrate
their accomplishments—not
just a book published, but one
on the bestseller list. We’re
thrilled to hear of the classmate,
neighbor, or cousin who got
elected, awarded a Nobel or Tony,
won the race. We don’t compare
ourselves or begrudge others’
triumphs as we plod in mediocrity.
We pass along their elation, spread
the Internet news, say, Congrats!
I’m happy for you! and mean it.

*

Joan Mazza has worked as a medical microbiologist, psychotherapist, and taught workshops on understanding dreams and nightmares. She is the author of six psychology books, including Dreaming Your Real Self, and her poetry has appeared in Crab Orchard Review, The Comstock Review, Prairie Schooner, Slant, Poet Lore, and The Nation. She lives in rural central Virginia.

Three Poems by Joan Mazza

~ ONE ART ~ 1 Comment

Waiting for the Doctor

Always late, he expected me to wait,
ready for the session’s start,
for me to take off my shoes,
lie down, not to complain or be angry
with him for keeping me waiting

for thirty or forty minutes, an hour,
sometimes two. I always arrive
early, never wanted to keep others
waiting for me. I don’t like
to feel rushed, prefer to allow time

for traffic, trouble, unexpected delays.
I waited in my car outside his house,
counted minutes. In the basement
of his house, I waited, in an area designed
for waiting, mesmerized by three giant

goldfish swimming in his giant tank.
If I was late, I lost that session’s time.
How long is too long to wait for someone
when you have an appointment? What
if he misses your scheduled time or

doesn’t show? If he never offers to
makeup time, he’s teaching you:
Your time doesn’t count. He’s the doctor.
He had important things that made
him late. I had a husband and a dog

waiting for me at home. I’d worked
a full day, had driven forty minutes,
hadn’t made or eaten dinner. I waited.
In charge, my analyst, my God decreed,
You have nothing to be angry about.

*

Tailored, Emerald Green

After Microbiology all day in Miami,
into the night I cut and sewed, hand-
stitched bound buttonholes, covered
buttons, lined the jacket in the same bold
silky fabric as the turtleneck blouse,

a suit that fit me loose enough to flow,
cuffs swaying with my walk, bright green
as the forest I longed for all those years
toiling in Florida. I waltz into my session
aglow, proud of my effort and outcome,
so well completed after a long hiatus
from my sewing machine.

My psychiatrist scowls at my twirl.
Why are you wearing that?
I made it. My voice shakes.
You’re all covered up! It’s a tent!

And so we spend another session
on his interpretation, his certainty
of my need to hide my body
up to my chin, my wearing pants,
not skirts. Proof of my hang-ups
and fears, proof of how much
more therapy I need with him.

*

What did you learn from your therapist?

All my friends were psychopaths
as were the men I dated, no matter if
I met them in church or bars. I was easily

manipulated into paying half, cooking
for men who wouldn’t take me out, only
wanted to get laid. (Didn’t I want sex too?)

Look how gullible and trusting I was
of all the wrong people. How grateful
I should be for his guidance, for teaching

to set limits, to say no, but not to him. When
I protested when he was two hours late
for a session, hours late for dinner, when

he asked to borrow money, when he mocked
my hand-tailored clothes, my haircut, he said,
You have no reason to be angry.

Too gullible and trusting of all the wrong
people, people took advantage. Couldn’t
I see who was being helpful?

*

Joan Mazza worked as a medical microbiologist, psychotherapist, and taught workshops on understanding dreams and nightmares. She is the author of six books, including Dreaming Your Real Self. Her poetry has appeared in The Comstock Review (forthcoming), Valparaiso Poetry Review, Prairie Schooner, Adanna Literary Journal, Poet Lore, and The Nation. She stays safely isolated in solitude in rural central Virginia.