Poetry by Remi Recchia

            ​Benjamin White CC



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​We’re in the car on Main Street & it’s dark


1. outside. headlights glide past us like luminescent whales. the moon is out (or it’s not). the car’s name is Lorna (or it’s not). a gift from my grandmother that I will eventually wreck.

2. inside. Songs for Swingin’ Lovers stashed inside the glove compartment. beige seats overwhelm me. the steering wheel, fake leather, rough under my shaking hands. I grip it carefully between my knuckle-teeth so we don’t crash because I am drunk.

3. underwater. each firefly outside the window perhaps, in actuality, a florescent jellyfish. your voice like the scream of pink or purple coral moments before they are un-reefed. a tree branch too close to the windshield. 

4. in my head. small traumas like cereal overdosing beyond the box. and then: four-legged distraction too quick for .31 BAC. the two of us holding hands as if no one has ever held a hand before but it’s not a hand, it’s a mouse or a rat or a possum nesting in the sticky jugular dark & the windshield shatters into tiny pieces that want my jugular. & there are other cars & there is noise & there are many sea owls in my brain. the white darkness of the stars burns the rubber off the tires in an elegant, sea-star pattern while I remember what it was like to own a pet dog. the way a creature needed me but could tear out my jugular had it wanted to.

5. when I wake. you are not there & that is to be expected. I am still drunk. I dream this night over (& over), smooth the pillow next to me (& my body). the porch light turns itself on when I cum without you. a lifetime of revision, of orange spots lighting up my liver.

Remi Recchia is a trans poet and essayist from Kalamazoo, Michigan. He is a Ph.D. student in English-Creative Writing at Oklahoma State University. He currently serves as an associate editor for the Cimarron Review. A three-time Pushcart Prize nominee, Remi’s work has appeared or will soon appear in Columbia Online Journal, Harpur Palate, and Juked, among others. He holds an MFA in poetry from Bowling Green State University. Remi’s first full-length poetry collection, Quicksand/Stargazing, is forthcoming with Cooper Dillon Books in fall 2021.

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