“Taboo” by Maria Berardi

Break with the precedent

of magic thinking

your team's jersey

your knocks     taps

your lucky shirt.

Worry never helped anything.

That is true. But to not 

is some violation, 

some radical break

with the primative     primate mind.

To live     not-knowing

and to not hold breath

to actually live

instead of waiting for life 

to start again after –

apostasy to attempt.

Necessary.

Go ahead     break.

Be a fool, for right now,

don't think.

About Maria Berardi
She/Her/Hers

Maria Berardi's work has appeared in local and national magazines and online (13 Magazine, Voca Femina, Mothering, the Opiate, getborn and most recently the Colorado Sun, Twyckenham Notes, SOUTH BROADWAY GHOST SOCIETY, 8th st. publishing guild/Turnsol, Luna Luna, Leaping Clear, DASH, Heirlock, From Whispers to Roars, Panoply, The Moving Force, Good Works Review, Hole in the Head Review, Braided Way, ONE ART, The Closed Eye Open, Dillydoun Review, Crepe and Pen, and forthcoming in Mad Blood; the annual anthologies from turnsol editions (formerly 8th st. publishing guild,) New Feathers, and The Mountain and this year's Texas Poetry Calendar by Kallisto Gaia Press,) as well as at the Arvada Center for the Arts and Humanities, in Arvada, CO, in collaboration with installation artist Bonnie Ferrill Roman. Her first collection, Cassandra Gifts, was published in 2013 by Turkey Buzzard Press, and she is currently shopping around her second, entitled Pagan. She lives in Fort Collins at the foot of the Front Range of the Rocky Mountains.

Twitter: @mariarazberardi
Facebook: maria.berardi.92
Instagram: mariariaberardi
Website: maria-berardi.com