Nancy Byrne Iannucci | My Generation | Poets Resist

Nancy Byrne Iannucci is the author of Temptation of Wood (Nixes Mate Review). Her poems have appeared in a number of publications including Gargoyle, Typehouse Literary Magazine, Three Drops from a Cauldron, The Mantle, Hobo Camp Review, Allegro, and Clementine Unbound. Nancy is a Long Island, NY native who now resides in Troy, NY where she teaches history and lives poetry.

Also by Nancy Byrne Iannucci: Temptation of Wood Sap Howling at Florescent Lights

Poets Resist
Edited by Michael Carter
August 5, 2019

Nancy Byrne Iannucci

My Generation

Can you picture it? mudslides and soiled skin wrapped in patch-work quilts and American flags, naked bodies on top of weekend lovers rolling on mossy rocks at water’s edge, smoking up in leased caravans, flower power painted patches made in China stitched to their sweet bippies trying to recapture what their grandparents did 50 years ago in Bethel. Funny, they probably wouldn’t give their grandparents the time of day on any other day but now they’re pretty damn cool to have danced to Cocker in the rain buck naked. There was wisdom in Morrison’s Hey, man. We just DID the Ed Sullivan Show. Hey, man. It’s time to let it go, deaden this godforsaken age of meaningless retro, remakes, recaptures, and do overs. My grandfather just had his 100th birthday, a Wexford, Ireland native who raised his family in Birmingham, England. Oh, how I would wear his tweed hat and speak fluent Brummie, if I could reel out his memories like a Super 8: the global depression, WWII, and the Guildford Four bombing, England get out of Ireland! He can’t tell me now, his mind is closed to his past. Lost. Gone. I would run through Shard End naked in the wee hours of the morning, wrapped in a quilt size Union Jack, anything to get those memories back. But we still have Woodstock — can you picture it?