“What’s a witness but a poem?” Remi Recchia
Her left breast, a shallow pool
where blue-tailed fish swim.
Wrist, a vermillion cactus flower.
Thigh’s white owl.
Scapula’s bat’s crooked wing.
Side winder slips through
the cage of her. A carmine heart
drums her chest.
**
In a restaurant called “That Lebanese Place,”
the young man behind the counter has her eyes,
large as figs, lids heavy, as if half asleep.
I can’t stop watching as he bags the falafel
and labneh, mouthing words to music
whose lyrics I do not understand. His beauty
before unknown to me, I fold a dollar into the tip jar.
**
Once I was a desert mother.
I drove through the desert without seeing
myself as desert. I drove through the red rock
of Utah, but all I could see was my suffering,
my son at Fish Lake, dope sick and trying
to recover. I drove his younger brother and sister
in a car so small we didn’t think we’d make it
up the mountain.
**
We were afraid we would never return home
with what we wanted.
**
A scorpion scurries out of my shoe.
A lizard performs push ups on my shoulder.
A hawk screams like a mother dying to her old self.
**
They have been keeping a happy secret from me.
Unafraid to speak, one of them makes a witty remark,
and we laugh together before saying our good-byes.
