Remi Recchia

Ghazal for a Business Trip

The flight attendant is offering me drinks & oysters
I can’t afford. Can she see my mind is elsewhere?

I showed up to the airport hungover, eyes
bloodshot, every pulse of me wanting to be elsewhere.

You called me the night before, but I couldn’t reach
the phone. We don’t know when I’m getting elsewhere.

My briefcase reeks of vomit. The cab driver agrees—
why couldn’t he have picked up a pretty girl, driven elsewhere?

I went out & started tab after tab, rekindling
old friendships after living elsewhere.

The pilot’s voice is loud on the intercom, directing
storm clouds & bird migrations elsewhere.

We both thought I could handle this trip.
I’m coming home after floating elsewhere.

But my pupils—dark, swollen—my forehead—
flushed with night sweat & booze bought elsewhere—

they tell me to stay away from the plane propeller, to not
take this life with a rope or blade elsewhere.

My pupils say, this shame won’t pass, but you
don’t have to speak, Remi, don’t have to go elsewhere.

Remi Recchia is a Ph.D. candidate in Creative Writing at Oklahoma State University. He is a transgender poet playwright from Kalamazoo, Michigan. His work has appeared in Barzakh Magazine, Pittsburgh Poetry Review, Front Porch, Gravel, Glass: A Journal of Poetry, and Haverthorn Press, among others. He holds an MFA in Poetry from Bowling Green State University.