A journal of art + literature engaging with nature, culture, the environment & ecology

August 2006

Remi Recchia, Michigan, USA

 

Imagine four legs of petrified wood rotting

underwater: the smell, the blurring, the texture.

You’d have to scrub your hands under hot water

to shed the slimy residue. The grime might remind

 

you of the camping trip with your dad, old

tent with a torn zipper, how all the flies collected

in your sleep. They’d nestled into your hair

and laid eggs before dawn. The next morning,

 

you’d woken, startled, as if by gunshot. Weak fire

breathed canned beans into soggy life. Your dad

fake cooking, smiling. Fake laughing, seeking

cell phone reception in the woods.

 

You’d waited in the car all day and asked for your

mother. She hadn’t come. You’d waited longer.

She still hadn’t come. At night you went down

by the water. You wondered what it’d be like to be a fish.

 


  

Remi Recchia is a trans poet from Kalamazoo, Michigan. He is currently a Ph.D. candidate in Creative Writing at Oklahoma State University. His work has appeared in Sleet MagazineBarzakh MagazinePittsburgh Poetry ReviewFront PorchGravelGlass: A Journal of Poetry, and Haverthorn Press, among others. He holds an MFA in Poetry from Bowling Green State University.

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