Alissa Sammarco

Alissa Sammarco was awarded the Pearl Sterling Evans Award and 3 Dean’s Awards for Playwriting at the University of Rochester.  Since then, she has focused on family and the practice of law. Alissa uses sharp imagery, much of which is drawn from the beaches and forests where she has lived, to capture moments in verse. Her work has appeared in Sheila-Na-Gig, Black Moon Magazine, Change Seven, Quiet Diamonds, The Main Street Rag, Stone Canoe, Voices in Italian Americana, Yearling, Rat’s Ass Review, the 2021, 2022 and 2023 LexPoMo Anthologies and elsewhere. She has published 3 chapbooks, Beyond the Dawn, I See Them Now, and Moon Landing Day. www.AlissaSammarco.com.

Funeral for Myself

I guess it happens to everyone,
so why not throw a second line parade.
I heard they threw one right down Bourbon Street
the day I was born, right before
Baptist Hospital burned down,
where my mother went to sleep
with a cocktail of morphine and propofol
only to wake up with babe in arms.
Only to wallow through nine and a half months
of largess in one hundred and ten percent humidity,
the swamp lapping at the door,
paved over by French courtiers
transplanted to New Orleans one seed at a time,
tossed out into the swamp to take root.
After all those months waiting,
anticipating, growing rounder,
pumping salt air up her skirts,
only to be knocked out for the big finale.
It’s a Girl!
Well Shit!