PLACING SEASHELLS ON GRAVES, BY PHOTOS

by Joan Leotta

 
 

The poet by the beach at Les Braves Monument, Saint-Laurent-sur-Mer

Living far now, from where
the veterans among my
beloved dead are interred,
I will place by my
father’s photo
a seashell, one that is also
a veteran of sorts, a shell
from Omaha Beach, Normandy.
 
Walking with our guide
where our soldiers landed,
my fingers, on that cool
May morning plucked,
two slim jack-knife clam shells, 
from the wet sands before the
tide could steal them back.
 
That same guide had recounted how

scientists found that

even after seventy years
sand of this place
still carried traces
of the landing party’s blood.
 
That same day, we were given roses
to lay on graves in the American cemetery.
I also laid down one of these shells,
with a few grains of sand still
clinging to its curves like
hands clasping a lifeboat
thinking that perhaps
the grains carried
DNA from a comrade of the
unknown man I visited.
 
The other of this precious pair
found its way home with me.
I did not wash it or place it in a
generic box: “Shell, France.”
Instead, I kept it aside, wrapped.
Each Memorial Day, I carefully place
that small remaining
Omaha Beach shell
with its few grains of sand
by my father’s picture.
Although he was on
Pacific Coast sands beating
back assaults from a different
Axis Power foe, he and the
Omaha Beach men
were also comrades.
I imagine the soul or souls
on the sand in my shell
communicating with my father,
trading tales of their fight for justice.
 
On Memorial Day, especially,
I think of them and
all who sacrificed their
lives for our country as does
everyone who loves
and remembers those soldiers,
everyone who loves freedom.

Joan Leotta plays with words on page and stage. She’s been published as essayist, poet, short story writer, novelist, and a two-time nominee for Pushcart and Best of the Net. Her poetry and stories have appeared in Spillwords,  One Art, The Ekphrastic Review, The Lake, and many others. She performs folktale programs most often highlighting  food, family, and strong women; she performs a one-woman show, “Meet Louisa May Alcott, Nurse and a Force in Healing America post Civil War.” Contact joanleotta[at]gmail[dot]com for her Main Street Rag poetry chapbook Feathers on Stone.

THERE ARE STILL WONDERFUL THINGS AWAITING DISCOVERY

by Joan Leotta

A new butterfly was recently discovered in Italy. It was identified in the woods of the province of Cosenza in Calabria by researchers from CREA, the Council for Agricultural Research and Analysis of Agricultural Economics. The scholars decided to dedicate their discovery to Giulio Regeni, the young researcher from Friuli who was tortured and killed in Egypt in 2016 by christening the insect with the name Diplodoma giulioregenii. —La Voce di New York, February 18, 2025

In Calabria, in a forest my  grandfather might have once explored, scientists are touting the discovery of a previously unknown species  of butterfly—dappled as if its golden wings were brushed by forest shadows, like today’s  shadows of poverty, of war. But still, the creature’s alive,  beautiful, and new to us,  its dappled color  perhaps the very reason this unique dna specimen was not noticed earlier. The scientists named it for a young Italian researcher cut down by violence in Cairo in 2016. This butterfly both new life, and momento mori, named for,  reminding us of a young man whose joy was in  discovering new things, reminding us that the thrill of the discovery of new beauty of gentle creatures like this  butterfly whose wings can fan the warm calm air  of love over us, if only we open our eyes to search for them. Welcome, we salute you, “Diplodoma giulioregenii” Joan Leotta plays with words on page and stage. She’s been published as essayist, poet, short story writer, novelist, and a two-time nominee for Pushcart and Best of the Net. Her poetry and stories have appeared in Spillwords,  One Art, The Ekphrastic Review, The Lake, and many others. She performs folktale programs most often highlighting  food, family, and strong women and has just debuted a one-woman show, “Meet Louisa May Alcott, Nurse and a Force in Healing America post Civil War.” Contact joanleotta[at]gmail[dot]com .

NEXT WEEK—DEO VOLANTE

by Joan Leotta

I’m supposed to drive to Raleigh,

2.5 hours from here and stay 

in a hotel alongside a creek

that sometimes floods

(as does the creek behind my house), 

to immerse myself in 

a sea of poety.

 

All of these plans could 

be swept away by the winds

and water of the pending hurricane.

 

So, why do I still plan?

Life had  taught me

all can change sooner than

the weatherman predicts,

sooner than my doctor thinks.

In an instant, crossing the street,

or stumbling on a sidewalk crack,

a new virus,

waiting at a bus stop

shopping in my favorite grocery

Someone’s car, my clumsiness,

germs, someone’s gun fueled anger,

all of these can take me

to the “other side.”

I know because my son

was hit by a car on a night 

he had plans,

so as I plan, I add, God Willing,
Deo Volante, to my notes,

knowing all could end now

but not worrying because once I step

to that other side, there will 

be loved ones who await me there.

Joan Leotta. Author, Story Performer

CONTROLLED BURN

by Joan Leotta

 

One might think that in an area 

Used to the force of hurricanes, 

Uncontrolled forces of wind and water

That wreak havoc on the land 

Might better understand

The paradox of their mission.

Setting a “controlled burn”

That’s how it started, they say.

To burn four hundred wooded acres 

to lessen fire’s damage.

“They” ignited the flames, watched, and left, 

not realizing until the next day

embers had reignited, blazed hot

and traveled on the wind

in the night.

Now, as I write, 

a week later,

almost sixteen thousand acres of 

woodland are now ash. Countless

animals, birds have lost homes,

people not as yet,

but the flames are still unextinguished,

blaze still only partly contained.

Red suns at dawn and dusk are beautiful 

but terrifying at the same time.

Wind, fire, water, earth—

four elements have already shown themselves

to be beyond our ability to reign them in.

We poets have known since forever, 

that these are forces beyond our control.

The only true controlled burn is anger.

Forgiveness extinguishes those flames.

We wait now for heaven’s forgiving

soaking rain to quench these flames

to stop this fire’s spread.

Joan Leotta is an author and Story Performer.

DRIVING BY THE DANUBE IN BUDAPEST

by Joan Leotta

on Holocaust Remembrance Day (Yom HaShoah)

Our tour bus was rushing to

Reach the next “place to see”

In Budapest when I looked

Out the window to watch

Night begin to be reflected

In the Danube.

We turned a corner and

Driving close by the river,

I saw, an installation

of sculpted shoes along the banks.

Our guide did not seem

to notice. Her purview was

government buildings and

restored churches.

With wifi I reached back

In time, to the moment when

real people, Budapest’s Jews,

fell out of those shoes into the

Danube as Nazi machine guns

cut through their bodies.

Men. Women. Children.

My heart began to pound,

Evil lives on where

people chose to ignore it

past or present.

Only remembering can

begin to protect us from

evil perpetrating such again.

Joan Leotta is an author and Story Performer.

WHAT WAR-WOUNDED OFFERED TODAY

by Joan Leotta

The wounded offer healing

Each morning I look to Ukraine,

Through the eyes of an email correspondent.

She and I mourn over cities laid waste,

adults and children wounded, dead

strewn on streets, live ones sheltering in cellars.

The email reaches out to me for support

to help them act on the prayers.

Daily I respond,

I send my hope and prayers

and concrete aid as I can.

Today, in the daily email,

along with news of wasted cities,

wounded children,

they sent their prayers to America

hoping we can put our own, offering prayer.

I pray we can turn our and their

prayers into action to stop the killings here.

Joan Leotta is an author and Story Performer who feels we need to do more than simply shed tears and points to the efficacy of the Assault Weapons Ban in lessening of such horrific incidents as one concrete thing we have once done and should do again.

THE END OF HOPE

by Joan Leotta

Somewhere in Ukraine, a child

measures her steps to school wondering

if her home will be standing

when the last bell rings,

if her parents will be safe if bombs fall,

if her school can shelter her

and her friends in the basement,

if she can find and reach her parents

should rubble, smoke fill her town.

Each time Putin spews out

his verbal assaults her hope erodes.

 

I know this because in October, 1961

when Castro fired verbal assaults

bragging on the power of his Soviet missles,

I lived in a likely-to-be targeted town.

As I climbed each of the 150 steps

From the bus stop to the top of the hill

To reach the gothic doors of the

1930s building that was my school,

I stopped on each step to pray

that we would all be safe,

and above all, that

my mother who

worked miles east from our home

and my father who worked

miles west from there

would find me and we would

face together

whatever terror Castro inflicted.

Each day my hope eroded, restored

when we escaped the physical horror

all those years ago.

 

But this morning, February 24, 2022

that Ukrainian child’s hope is gone

in a mudslide of fears made real,

playing out with troops and

air strikes and people rushing

about in fear. Her hope ended, I

hope for her that no matter what, her family

will remain together, sheltering

each other with their love.

 

Author's Note: This poem has been in my heart for several days. Yesterday’s New Yorker article "The Crushing Loss of Hope in Ukraine" put the words in my pen, and today’s news from all sources about the invasion gave the ending lines.

Author and story Performer Joan Leotta is the author of the poetry collection Languid Lusciousness with Lemon. And she is offering her chapbook Gifts of Nature for free at this link.

MY FRIEND'S HOUSE IN THE REDWOODS

by Joan Leotta

He raised a family there.
Hoped to die there he told me,
but not in a fire.

Out now.
Unbowed.

Wonders what he’ll find
when he returns,
life on hold as fire rolls.

Out now.
Unbowed.

Television radio, his eyes and ears,
trending views of crackling flames,
ash piles where homes once were.

Out now.
Unbowed.
Hopefully, he waits.

Joan Leotta has evacuated for hurricanes and feels the pain of all of those who are forced to leave their homes--for any reason.

FROM PAX AMERICANA TO PAX AMERIQUE

by Joan Leotta

Do you recall the era—
Pax Americana—
after World War II when American passports
were king? We traveled everyone, alone, in groups.
some discerning some disdaining.
Our journeys were bathed
in the glow of Pax Americana,
peace to the world, good will toward us, a protection
bestowed on us not merely by troops sweeping in on
winds of war, but by good will
floating on the gentle breeze
of peace through Marshall Plan, Berlin Airlift.
I studied then, traveled, picked up
mail at American Express, secure
in the knowledge my country uber alles
had molded a peace so all could
move freely, safely, from place to place.
Our new era, not even dignified by Latin,
instead simply pas Amerique, non ai americani
No, no , no, no. Now we can’t go—anywhere.
We are barred from their sacred
places, our passports, worthless paper.
Can we console ourselves with
America the beautiful? Would that we could.
Instead, pandemic hotspots
boil over from sea to shining sea.
Our purple mountains offer no safe majesty.
Pax America no longer applies within
our borders or without.
Shootings, riots in the streets, virus
feverishly consuming young and old.
All of this, all of this in four short years.
Survival is still within our reach,
it takes only a small act of faith, kindness,
and reliance on the science
God has given us—wear a mask,
wash your hands, stay apart.
Even in Dante’s time, these things were
known, yet so many ignore them,
marching like lemmings into
ventilators.
Pax Americana,
how I mourn your passing.

Joan Leotta is a writer and performer. She writes about and performs tales of food, family, and strong women—and is often touched by  how moments in history affect the daily lives of ordinary people.

DECAMERON FOR A NEW PLAGUE

by Joan Leotta

Photo of Fiesole by Sailko at visittuscany.com

Boccaccio and his friends
escaped to the hills of Fiesole,
well above miasma of air
of Florence, for even her beauty
could not hold back the plague.
At last, among his friends
breathing the clean air of country living,
these friends staved off
even fear of infection
with stories—
Decameron.
Now, who will gather up little ones
from the close quarters of their cages?
Who will hold them close,
breathe light and love to clear
the air in their tight spaces?
Who will write a Decameron
to stave off
their fears and tears?

Joan Leotta plays with words on page and stage. Her poems have been published in the Ekprhastic Review, Pinesong, Anti-Heroin Chic, Ovunque Siamo, Fourth River,  Silver Birch, and many others. She performs personal and folk tales of food, family, and strong women. Her first chapbook is out from Finishing Line Press: Languid Lusciousness with Lemon.