Remi Recchia
Frost and freeze conditions will kill crops, other sensitive vegetation, and possibly damage unprotected outdoor plumbing. Take steps now to protect tender plants from the cold. To prevent freezing and other possible bursting of outdoor water pipes, water pipes should be wrapped, drained, or allowed to drip slowly.
—Stillwater, Oklahoma, Weather Forecast
Under deer’s eyes and a gray sky, I am driving
you to the airport. The orange Oklahoma sunrise
sleeps, still. Everything is asleep except us.
Your energy is a nervous battery: your eyelashes
witness the time, the radio. Your boarding pass
collects sweat under pale fingers. I’ve never been to a funeral:
dark masses of ceremony and ash. I don’t know
what a dead body smells like. What goes into
a eulogy? Something about the senses, the smell
skin sings after love-making, or what a body
count means to us. Something about surrender
or Christ or beauty. There is nothing beautiful
about death. I rap my knuckles on the steering
wheel, wonder what to say. I’m sorry your mother
is dead. I’m sorry your father is dead. I’m sorry
I couldn’t take that call for you. The car almost
refused to start last night after work. I took it
for a test drive, wanted to feel moonbeams
kiss my bare chest. The bristled black hairs around my collar-
bone hid themselves from the stars. My teeth
ached as I sat down in the grass. I wanted to eulogize
your parents, both of them, and their marriage,
considered forging your signature beneath a poem
snuck deep inside your pocket. But I didn’t
write them last night, and I didn’t write them
this morning, and I still don’t know what to say,
the car’s headlights harsh and golden and brave.
***
Remi Recchia is a trans poet from Kalamazoo, Michigan. He is a Ph.D. candidate in Creative Writing at Oklahoma State University. He currently serves as an associate editor for the Cimarron Review. Remi’s work has appeared in Sleet Magazine, Front Porch, and Glass: A Journal of Poetry, among others. He holds an MFA in Poetry from Bowling Green State University.