In Produce, there was Leticia, my ex, examining a cantaloupe. In a diaphanous yellow halter and black short shorts, she looked great, her cart full of vegetables. She shook her head. “You don’t look too good,” she said, “you should get some sun. Ta-ta.” She steered her cart toward the nuts and granola bulk bins while I headed to the cash register. In the Outdoor Shop, she appeared from behind one of the mirrored doors holding two pairs of nylon running shorts as I tried on a Buzz Off hat and shirt. “Be careful, those are expensive,” she said. Now I noticed the birthmark on her cheek, the delicate blue veins at her temples. It had been a year since she threw the pan at me and broke the window, a year since she yelled, “The one time I ask you to clean up your mess, you ask me to help?”, a year since I built a bonfire in the backyard and burned up all her Aveda Cosmetics and her drawer of sexy underwear, a year since we split apart like two avocado halves—”Are you living with anyone” I asked. “Never again,” she answered and took her shorts to the cash register—a year since she delivered all my jeans, shirts and shoes to the Salvation Army and dropped our shelves of food in the bin for the Church at the grocery, a year since I robbed petty cash and ran our old Dodge into a tree, a year since she kidnapped the dog and the parakeet. At the stoplight waiting for the signal to change, suddenly Leticia stood next to me. “Why did we break up?” I asked. “Why did we ever get together?” she replied. And as I made my way through the diner to the last seat at the counter, there she was, her hand on the swivel seat. “You can have it,” she said. “No, you can have it,” I said, and this went on awhile until a tall bald guy sat down between us, “Would you mind?” he asked. “Enjoy your chicken pot pie,” I said, walking away. “Enjoy your chicken pot pie,” she said, walking away in the opposite direction. Later when I opened the door to my apartment, on the couch, there was Leticia; in the bathroom mirror, Leticia swabbing her face; in the bedroom, Leticia sprawled on top of me; in the kitchen, Leticia brewing up the coffee as I hunkered down over a piece of cake, fierce as a hungry squirrel.
Further Reading
Kelly Davio interviewed by Michael Schmeltzer: Feeding One Another
Kelly Davio is the former Managing Editor of Los Angeles Review, Associate Editor of Fifth Wednesday Journal, and a reviewer for Women’s Review of Books. Her work has been honored in Best New Poets and has appeared in journals including Gargoyle, The Cincinnati Review, Bellingham Review, The Evansville Review, The Portland Review, Pank, and others. In Burn This House, her debut poetry collection, Davio takes on her […]
IN A FIFTH FLOOR MOSCOW WALK-UP, WAITING FOR THE PLUMBER by J. Patrick Lewis
Relentlessly the week-long leak from my sink angers the Grebnikovs below me, Misha coping with joints so painful the concert violinist has forgotten how to saw a bow; Lydia banging on her ceiling/my floor, the broom handle, futile against the drip, but the rat-a-tat-tatting’s a startling imitation of a militia issue Makarov. Moscow never learned […]
On the Move with Neil Shepard’s Vermont Exit Ramps
(reviewed by Tony Whedon)
VERMONT EXIT RAMPS by Neil Shepard Big Table Publishing 50 pages reviewed by Tony Whedon Four decades ago Leo Marx defined the central conceit of the American pastoral as the steam locomotive breaking a nineteenth century forest’s silence. In his classic The Machine in the Garden Marx examined that figure’s significance to American literature as it chugged through […]