Let's Keep the South Bronx Clean

Sister Catherine has her name across the roof

promising your globes will turn in the window,

promising the rain in the buckets,

promising the workers in orange can turn on the water.

Late last August the heat from the sidewalk curled

chocolate butter into my sneakers.

My mother said no more days in the street and 

kept me upstairs to toast bread and watch movies.

Sister Catherine has pounded nails into stone and 

made steps to the church,

steps to the front door,

steps to the heaven she spray-painted against the bricks.

Twice in one month, they shot the mailman coming 

up the street with his magazines.

When they buried him by the El no one said his

name out loud.

Sister Catherine has Christmas gifts in garbage bags

that the kids wait for in the lobby,

the kids wait for in the summer,

the kids wait for praying by their beds at night.

Once at the beginning of the school year, the sister

put out boxes for us with pencils and clean paper.

We all wrote notes to thank her and 

then sailed them off the roof.

Because the Professor Calls You 'Andi'

(For Andisiwe)

When I say your name, I say the way you 

think of us and the way we look at your eyes.

How they blink away the best parts of you.

You curl your tongue at the screen when the

professor sounds your letters into a riddle and 

climbs up the wall with it hanging from a rope.

We suggest he put them in a tube and 

sing it out the other side.

When I say your name, I say the way you 

arrived on globes that spin in my Bronx window. 

Your homeland is morning, and now the days 

are just a sundown train station.

Nothing is more opposite than our folded notes

in ocean bottles. 

You try to move your lips like a tunnel so we 

can see the other side of who you are.

When I say your name, I say the beginning and

end of each day and all those party-dress-pictures

trapped on your phone.

I see your cousin's birthday cake and the first

boy you kissed.

When you whisper into your hands, I hear all the 

people you left behind.

When I say your name, I see your cloudy notes

for the history class you take and how 

you believe the world will end.

I see you on the buses with your mask held

tight to your face.

When I say your name, I say you inside out.

Amy Soricelli has been published in numerous publications/ anthologies including, The Westchester Review, Literati Magazine, The Muddy River Poetry Review, Rumblefish Quarterly, The Bronx Magazine, Glimpse Poetry, *That Plane is not a Star (to be released 2023/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. *Pushcart Nomination: 2021, Nominated twice; "Best of the Net" 2020, 2013, Nominated by Billy Collins for Aspen Words Emerging Writer's Fellowship/2019