by Alan Bern
Things I Can’t Tell My Landlord
I.
Ronnie, I’m not saying I’m a liar but sometimes
my rent is late not because my boss spelled my last name
wrong on the check again and the bank had to bounce it back again
but my rent is late because I, Remi, am just a man
who is always having a hard week
and yes, I spent it on dried
pineapple and a new watch.
I know I said I wouldn’t get a cat.
Cats can’t do the dishes or take out
the trash. They can’t even talk
right. But screw it, I got a cat and named him
Green Bean, and I wake to his tongue
gifting away at the hair on my head, bathing
me like we’re brothers
so hard I worry he’ll van Gogh
my ears, so each morning I feed him extra
kibble after rinsing the usual nightmares
from my swollen mouth.
He sits in a wooden chair
like a person.
I sit in a wooden chair
like a person.
I don’t know who filed that noise
complaint, but yes, that was me
hollering like a bull in heat last August.
No guests, just me. I guess
you could say we all know our own bodies
best, and anyway, I just had to unwind.
Ronnie, have you ever gotten to the end
of your rope? Watched the fibers
unravel at the ends like a useless, one-eyed snake?
Thought about calling your mother or leaving a note and deciding, instead,
that you’ll ask St. Peter
not to run the news in the paper just this once?
Have you ever written a will
for your cat even though he snores
and pretends the gas he passes from his perfect
furry anus is yours?
Have you ever loved another creature
so fully you let him eat your toenails?
Ronnie, I have stared down the end of my rope, I have hanged
my last slippery Remi on a barrel,
I have shot my eyes out
underwater. But underwater—wait.
Underwater there are fishes big and golden and grand
as dinner plates, gold as a school
bus in the rich kids’ school district where the jailors—I mean
janitors—almost make a living wage, and underwater
there are lionfish that stand tall like mermen before we took
their staffs and there’s enough space for Green
Bean to plant his own vegetable garden where he could grow
rutabagas and turnips and carrots
sharp as the Catskills, sharp as the blister in my eye.
II.
Let me begin again.
My cat eats sleeping pears
for breakfast. I dice them carefully, one
velvet bite per saber fang.
Green Bean dives into his bowl face first, tunnel-
visioned joy and gratitude. Some
might call this greed.
If Green Bean could spell, Ronnie, I’m sure
he’d put a curse on you. His paws
rising in furry power. His eyes their own crystal
balls. Ronnie, sometimes I regret removing his testicles.
My ghost-balls squirm at the thought of an unforevering.
But mine aren’t ghosts, are they?
A phantom has to have lived
before the pain.
Sometimes I wonder what God was thinking:
no balls, no sperm, no phallus for Remi?
I can’t think of anyone yearning
more for fatherhood. But, anyway,
Ronnie, I’m sure you don’t care about my trans-
formed genitals. You’re too busy waging war
against the working class. And really, with everything
else going on, these flying circuses, these melting
planets, these wax faces, these winged masks, these falling
monkeys, these hungry mice, these strangled gasoline
pumps, these rotten teeth, these translucent stop
signs, these sour trees, these bitter shovels—this is what you want?
To draw money out of Green Bean and me
like blood from an expired gemstone?
We have NOTHING, Ronnie, and still you take EVERYTHING
until we are anemic. I schedule organ transfusions for my bank
account because your vampirism has become
an addiction, hasn’t it?
Ronnie, I know about addiction. I know the pull
of the needle and the gleam of the glass. Nothing
feels better than that fix. I bet you lie
naked at night next to your wife—is she greedy, too?—
atop a bed of money, Benjamin Franklin buttering
your biscuits, inhaling the green cash like the rest of us
count herbivores, rounding up to the next dollar and cent and dime.
What would you do if I knocked on your door?
Said, hey, man, we’re late for the next
meeting. Said, if we rush we can get to the sixth
step. We’d show up, the two of us, lord
and lorded, pouring each other
burnt coffee in paper Dixie cups, eyelids
growing dizzy from secondhand smoke.
I’d hold your smooth hand while we mumbled
Our Fathers and counted strangers’
birthdays. Then we’d go home, I guess,
and I’d still owe you money.
Do I sound bitter, Ronnie? Do I sound
hurt? I don’t know if I’m hurt but I know an accordion-
scream when it unfolds, a dramatic harpy
organ. Sometimes I am an accordion-scream.
Green Bean plays me
like a piano. He sinks his paws
into the softness I wish was firm, kneading retracted
claw against stretchmarks and well-
worn hips. He curls his head on my flat
chest and runs his tongue-hooks along the bristles
spilling over my tank top, itching for connection.
Remi Recchia is a trans poet and essayist from Kalamazoo, Michigan. He is a PhD candidate in English-Creative Writing at Oklahoma State University. He currently serves as an associate editor for the Cimarron Review and the Reviews Editor for Gasher Journal. A four-time Pushcart Prize nominee, Remi’s work has appeared or will soon appear in World Literature Today, 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) and Sober (Red Bird Chapbooks, 2022). He lives in the United States with his wife and their two pet cats.
Retired children’s librarian Alan Bern is a published/exhibited photographer and the author of three books of poetry. He is cofounder with artist/printer Robert Woods of the press/publisher Lines & Faces, linesandfaces.com. Recent awards include: honorable mention for Littoral Press Poetry Prize (2021); flash fiction finalist for Ekphrastic Sex (2021). Alan photographs, and from his work with Lines & Faces, he combines his photos and words, now a vital part of his daily art practice, photo-haiga.* Recent photos published include: www.unearthedesf.com/alan-bern, www.feralpoetry.net/four-haiga-by-alan-bern/, www.pleaseseeme.com/issue-7/art/alan-bern-art-psm7/, and https://www.mercurius.one/home/next-s-s-startle.