Nora Luongo
This Morning (an erasure poem for Tony Soprano)
Your mama said
you'd be the one
in a blue moon
your eyes all love
never told you
but you're looking good, baby
(you're feelin' shame)
a bad sign in your eyes
this mornin'
got blue
you woke up
upside down
ain't the same blues
Hey one in a million
you got that shotgun?
Shame about it – a bad sign in your eyes
this morning
got a gun got you
Your mama said
you'd be the one
in a blue moon
your eyes all love
never told you
but you're looking good, baby
(you're feelin' shame)
a bad sign in your eyes
this mornin'
got blue
you woke up
upside down
ain't the same blues
Hey one in a million
you got that shotgun?
Shame about it – a bad sign in your eyes
this morning
got a gun got you
Nora Luongo was born and raised in Elizabeth, NJ and received her MFA in Creative Writing from Rutgers University-Newark. Her poetry has appeared in Bellevue Literary Review, Re-Side Magazine, Black Telephone Magazine, and others, and in the following anthologies: No Tender Fences: An Anthology of Immigrant & First-Generation American Poetry, Divine Feminist: An Anthology of Poetry & Art by Womxn & Non-Binary Folx, and Hecate: Decay. She can be found on Twitter and Instagram as @phigirl