JoAnna Scandiffio

My Book Club

 

Another member died

before we finished
one of the great novels

No one had wanted to read
Moby Dick

for fear of getting seasick

Anna Karenina was acceptable
a love story

Everybody had seen the movie
we knew the ending

We could waltz
through eight hundred pages

sip cognac      skip

parts that didn’t touch
the lover’s hand

As I recall     I said

Let’s go slow
Let’s close read

As if the train
wasn’t pulling into the station

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JoAnna Scandiffio is a graduate gemologist living in San Francisco. Her poems are like bird nests, made with fragments randomly connected to hold the moment. She is like the old medieval monks who copied verses in colored inks so the world could sing forever. Her work has appeared in Calyx, Poets 11, ThePoemingPigeon, Sugared Water, The MacGuffin, Italian Americana, The RavensPerch, The Ekphrastic Review, and other journals. She is a Pushcart Prize Nominee and a finalist for the Jane Underwood Prize 2024. Her chapbook Water is Never Still is forthcoming from Finishing Line Press.