It’s Easy

It is easy to: romanticize:
dark-haired boy in skinny jeans          misunderstood but smoking a cigarette      moths stuck
behind his eyeballs               breaking a bar stool at his own birth                 as they say heroic

It is easy to: romanticize:
showing up late because he’s brilliant         hungover in public because he’ll get paid anyway
kissing the wrong girl because his eyes won’t open            quarreling the police to cinders
coughing up art in the holding cell         skipping meals for that ghostly Byron look

It is easy to: see: this trajectory
in 10 years he’s not a boy        just the last hunter without a rabbit        too slow to swallow the bugle
eating up white stags in his night vision         drunk and disorderly burned into
his rib cage             maybe a divorce maybe 2         brilliant money to pay brilliant alimony to
pay off brilliant accident

It is easy to: read: these tea leaves
but a stitching pain to chew the bitter nerves laced in the teacup       wondering where he keeps
his bicycle at night     and if anyone will bother to steal it.

Remi Recchia is a trans poet and essayist from Kalamazoo, Michigan. He is a Ph.D. candidate in English-Creative Writing at Oklahoma State University. He currently serves as an associate editor for the Cimarron Review and Reviews Editor for Gasher Journal. A four-time Pushcart Prize nominee, Remi’s work has appeared or will soon appear in Best New Poets 2021, Columbia Online Journal, Harpur Palate, and Juked, among others. He holds an MFA in poetry from Bowling Green State University. Remi is the author of Quicksand/Stargazing (Cooper Dillon Books, 2021); his forthcoming chapbook, Sober, will be published with Red Bird Chapbooks in 2022.