Maria Marrocchino is a writer and producer living in Manhattan.  She has lived in Manhattan for over 15 years and has been writing since the age of 13.  Her poetry has appeared in Clockwise Cat, Broad, Belleville Park Pages, SNR Review, and Main Street Rag.  Her short stories have appeared in The Sun for Readers Write. Her travel stories can be found in The Independent Traveler and she has been a features writer for Dazed & Confuzed, Platinum, Nylon and City magazines. She collaborated with breast cancer patients and wrote poetry accompanying photos of breast cancer survivors.  This poetry has been published in a book entitled Winged Victory: Transcending Breast Cancer.

Blue paint is wet. I love you Walt Whitman
I can only dream of your
sun-kissed skies and cipher canyons
fields of tall romantic grass,
sagging moon on a glimmering surface.
My fears stop me from moving forward.
Your lilac heaven will have to try hard to wake me.
ATM is out of cash. But Dylan Thomas is waiting for me
on a white horse, comfort in hand,
sipping my orange mouth into his large tomb poems.
Poems I can’t keep up with my ink getting dry.
Like a crackling wheat field I’ve imagined.
Lost, pair of sterling silver earrings.
Color like the blankness of the city buildings that envelop me and
Ginsburg once ranted about.
Thick in my ears, this howling.
I need another day to think about all my responsibilities,
not ready to give up my sofa, my closet space, my familiar day.
It keeps me company all those lists of things I have to do.
Sample sale this Saturday.
Shoes that are too big for me but fit Annie Sexton perfectly.
The size of my umbrella mind creeping over my soul’s chances.
Tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow I’ll make all the important decisions.
Like a Shakespearean tragedy, do I honestly think I have
any real choices about what happens in my life?