EXCERPT

“Hoopla”

hot pink joggers

hotter pink tee

orange and fuchsia paisley

cardigan, navy squiggles

tangerine flowers

grow on pale pink socks

two-tone sneakers

robin’s egg and navy blue

eighty-something dressed

to trot, nowhere to go

nap

perhaps

About the Poet

Fay L. Loomis lives a quiet life in the woods in Kerhonkson, New York. Her poetry and prose are included in “Dad,” Blasphemous; “One Hundred Percent,” The Writers Club; “The Play Boy From Fowlerville,” Story Sanctum  and Tales from the Vault: Volume III; “The Wind Bloweth Where It Listeth,” Spillwords. In addition to work in six anthologies, Fay has authored three chapbooks: Sunlit Wildness (Origami Poems Project, 2024), Living the Verb (Cyberwit.net, 2025) and Fragments of Myself ( Porkbelly Press, 2026). She is a Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net Anthology nominee. 

About the Cover Artist

S. L. Rika has loved art all her life. As a young child she was always fascinated by colors. Art has seen her through some very dark times. She’s painted everything from still life, portraits, florals, abstracts, landscapes, seascapes, and animals. Always, whenever a passenger in a vehicle, in her imagination she would automatically crop scenes for their best balance. Art is not a passing fancy in her life.

Reviews

By turns enchanting and bracing, these poems are threaded through with spirituality conveyed by concrete images of both nature's beauty and aging: periwinkle violets, bud-shaped wombs, pendulous breasts. They are wry but also contemplative about growing old, evocative of a speaker at peace with the downturns that the years bring. Simultaneously, they are full of the joy and optimism brought about by simply being alive. Loomis's voice is vibrant and dynamic, even as she bemoans the inevitable physical decline that is a necessary element of living and, as Freud observed, of merely being born. A treasurable manual for life.

— José Sotolongo, author of the novel The Optimistic Cuban

Fragments of Myself is, as the title suggests, a collection of self-aware, reflective writing. Fay Loomis is a keen observer of small details, of both the natural world and of a quiet home life, and she bundles these into compact poems that are as honest as they are concise. The speaker of these poems advises, “do not search for what you’ve lost” (The Last Storyteller), and the tone of the book is that of hope in the face of setbacks and enjoyment of whatever one can appreciate in the mystery of everyday life. In the end, “Mother Earth will claim her due / God’s song will be my song” (Ode to the Bhagavad Gita).

— Meg Freer, author of Still Life Waiting: Notes on a Ghost Town and A Man of Integrity

In Fragments of Myself, the narrator of the “Last Storyteller” advises, “do not search for what you’ve lost/…speak of small tokens of love.” Poem after poem of Fay L. Loomis’ luminous verse opens to explore both the ravages of age, and the gift that some are lucky to develop: seeing the world as a place of deep human connection, and rich in nature, and the joy of animals. Loomis finds love even in the darkest places.  

           — Tina Barry, author of I Tell Henrietta

Fragments of Myself is a fierce and soulful collection of sixteen exquisitely crafted poems that come face to face with a subject most shy away from: aging, physical decline, and collapse. Here, Loomis embraces her life in later years with a relentless courage to heal after a sudden heart attack, to accept her physical limitations, and in so doing discover the blessings, sight, and beauty in longevity. Her poems are playful as in “Quee Qwah,” a made-up mantra for joy; they are meditative as in “Catchment of Quiet;” instructive as in “How to Self-Mine,” and stunningly imagistic as in “Lunar Sight” and “The Tree in My Yard.” The poet’s words like delicate brushstrokes evoke awareness in one’s self and one’s place in nature. Loomis tells us: “… I am packing my suitcase with gratitude. Alone, not lonely, I will go politely.”

 — Catherine Arra, author of Solitude, Tarot & the Corona Blues and Deer Love