Julia Meylor

Julia Meylor, of Groton, Connecticut, is a published poet and essayist, freelance editor, proofreader, and occasional babysitter. She retired in 2018 after working as a corporate communications manager, high school English teacher, and newspaper editor. Her poems have appeared in numerous literary journals and anthologies.

She shares her poems, essays, and photography in her blog, Between Land and Sky, and she loves words almost as much as her grandchildren.

Julia has master’s degree in teaching from Rhode Island College and a bachelor’s degree in journalism from Iowa State University.

► Julia's microchaps & selected poems are available below.

Origami Microchap	Selected Poem(s)
Hair: Seven Styles
Click title to download PDF microchap, save & print Cover photo of 8-yr-old author sporting a pixie cut •	1963 At five, she gets a pixie cut just like the photo in McCall’s. Looks like hay whacked by a scythe in July 1969 Almost thirteen, she won’t go to Bonnie’s Beauty Parlor. Wants hair down her back like Janis Joplin. 1979 At twenty-two, she blow dries, coaxes curls, brushes, sprays. Tucks baby’s breath behind an ear on her wedding day. ·	1990 At thirty-ish, a glamour photo for a sleep-deprived new mom: bare shoulders, up-do. Leaking breasts cropped. 1997 The big 4-0: foil packets of honey, ash, lemon camouflage a head filled with demands, details, demons. P.S. – 2012 Back to long layers, monthly color, electric rollers, hairspray. Ah, frailty, you still know my name. • Julia Meylor Simpson © 2012
What Remains
Click title to download PDF microchap Cover art by Gerald J. Meylor Acknowledgements Heading Home from Omaha: Blue Earth Review Mankato State Univ. 2009 Memorial Day Morning in an Iowa Cemetery 35th Annual Mississippi Valley Poetry Contest, May 2008	Heading Home from Omaha Take Mormon Bridge east over Big Muddy’s flowing skirt. Cottonwoods rustle. Two asphalt ribbons uncurl as Iowa shimmers. Turn on cruise, AC. Soybeans-pond-hayfield- cornfield-cornfield-town-cornfield: wide blue sky unfenced. Sun slides below grain edging everything in gold. Even rental car. Turn at Sioux City. Stars, farm lights flick on ahead. Forty miles to go. · Julia Meylor Simpson © 2010	Memorial Day Morning in an Iowa Cemetery Stray scraps of gray wool weave above ancient humus, new grass. Purple irises in aluminum foil guard names on ordered marble. Breeze embraces earthworms, lilacs, a child’s laughter shushed. Old farmers finger dull medals, shattered boy memories unvoiced. A family encircles a slight stone leaving them wordless long ago Minister’s wife assembles children to place plastic wreaths on cue. Taps from lone high school bugler patter off grain elevator on Main. Later, iron gates keen in rusty alto, meadowlarks resume their matins.

Poets