“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.
Jane Ann Fuller is a graduate of the Iowa Writer's Workshop and a recipient of the James Boatwright II Poetry Prize. Half-Life (Sheila-Na-Gig Editions, 2021) was a finalist for the National Indie Excellence Awards. Poems appear in Calyx, Verse Daily, On The Seawall, Shenandoah, BODY, All We Know Of Pleasure: Poetic Erotica By Women, and elsewhere. A collaboration REVENANTS: A STORY OF MANY LIVES was published with a grant from the Ohio Arts Council.
See you at AWP!
2/7 / Meet the Artist with visiting poet-in-residence Farnaz Fatemi / The Library at The Betsy-South Beach, Miami Beach, FL / Live and Live-Streamed on Instagram Live/Facebook Live at @swwimmiami / 6:00 pm EST / Free
2/7 / Poetry Reading with visiting poet-in-residence Farnaz Fatemi + local writer Fabienne Josaphat / The Library at The Betsy-South Beach, Miami Beach, FL / Live and Live-Streamed on Instagram Live/Facebook Live at @swwimmiami / 7:30 pm EST / Free
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