Nancy Byrne Iannucci
Switch
For Gino Iannucci, John Lucero, and the '90s street skaters
They skated in pants that were a size
eight-person-tent,
white T-shirts flapped against their push,
a truce to the dying vert skaters.
even Lucero didn’t know
Gino’s kickflip down hubba was switch.
They rolled in packs,
a horrifying gang on four wheels
& there I was at ringside,
their distraction-
pinching the security guard’s chubby cheeks
as he tried to grab their camcorder,
footage that went from police station,
to police station, Big Brother to Thrasher,
Transworld to Tokyo.
Catnip
It was on your breath,
I could smell it
while you were stuffing catnip
into the bellies of mice,
you started drinking again-
& then the cats danced like mad.
Nancy Byrne Iannucci is the author of Temptation of Wood (Nixes Mate Review, 2018) and Toxic, which will be released in 2020 (dancing girl press). Her poems have appeared in a number of publications including Gargoyle, Clementine Unbound, Three Drops from a Cauldron, 8 Poems, Glass: A Journal of Poetry (Poets Resist), Hobo Camp Review, and Typehouse Literary Magazine. Nancy is a Long Island, NY native who now resides in Troy, New York, where she teaches history at the Emma Willard School.