Untitled

Jeannie Lupton ​

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first Thanksgiving
without the relatives
instead
I see a movie
"The Addams Family"

at seventy
kissing lessons
from a younger lover
she tells me
I am not improving

menopause
I stop looking for the man
my father told me
I would live
vicariously through

Facebook
posts our new relationship
my photo
next to your profile picture
of a caterpillar

sing-along
at senior housing
I envy
The Girl
from Ipanema

for my cat
who likes order
I make the bed—​
at the SPCA
she knew I was her person

at my reading
I try to impress her
with tanka
but she's on the cafe floor
playing with the service dog

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Jeannie Lupton moved to the San Francisco East Bay from Northern Virginia in 2002 and has been active in the poetry community there, and in the tanka community more generally worldwide, ever since. Her work has appeared in various journals and booklets over the years, culminating in her collection, But Then You Danced: Tanka (Raw Art Press, 2007), followed by the publication of a second collection, Love Is a Tanka (Blue Light Press, 2021). Jeannie hosted the Second Saturday Poetry and Prose Reading Series at Frank Bette Center for the Arts in Alameda, California, for over 13 years. She has also given several short solo performances at the Marsh Theater in Berkeley, as well as leading a memoir writing group for seniors on Zoom. She is a member of the Fresh Ink Poetry Collective and Bay Area Poets Coalition, and writes with Clive Matson's 2-Busy-2-Write group every Tuesday night. She lives at Strawberry Creek Lodge in Berkeley with 150 other elders and her cat, BB.

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