Dear Red Airplane: Poems by Robin Reagler. Number 8 in the Seven Kitchens Press ReBound Series.

Originally published in our 2011 Summer Kitchen Series, this new edition features an introduction by Laura Mullen.

Release date: February 28, 2018 [100 copies]
23 pages
$9.00

Robin Reagler is the author of two poetry chapbooks. Teeth & Teeth, selected by Natalie Diaz, won the Charlotte Mew Prize (Headmistress Press, 2018). Reagler’s poems have been published in dozens of journals, including Ploughshares, American Letters & Commentary, Pleiades, VOLT, Iowa Review, and Colorado Review. She serves as the Executive Director of Writers in the Schools (WITS). She volunteers on national boards, including the Association of Writers & Writing Programs (AWP) and LitNet (The Literary Network). She lives in Houston, Texas, with her partner, Marcia Chamberlain, and their daughters, Carrie and Pearl.

Saints Among Us

                                                                      Siena, Italy

In the piazza, daylight 
praised each of us. We, the seashell. We, the baking brick.  
Our eyes wild like salmon leaping  
up for sun. And masked 
by our dark glasses, we strolled in a bay of shades.  

Laundry dripped dry in the Italian afternoon.    
Nuns wearing gold wedding bands stared at the pavement as they passed by. 
The two-year-old in overalls, a bold hunter of lazy birds, boasted the loudest song.  

Without words we came to an agreement:  
Let us take comfort in the stories of timely strangers. 

Because all roads took us to the same place,  
arrows showed us where to go—  
to the piazza.   

Who were we that afternoon? 

As the daytrippers checked their watches and flew away,  
the clouds charged madly toward tomorrow.
The churning yearned openly.
Show me, the world kept yelping.

Sunset was showing off again.  
Day taught night 
all about kissing.

It was as though my eye were a microscope,   
and I was truly seeing   
after a blinding time. 
I could have winked at myself, 
so happy to be alive.

• Purchase Dear Red Airplane here or send an e-mail query to sevenkitchenspress at gmail dot com.
• Visit Robin’s web page here.
• Purchase Robin’s new book, Into The The, from Backlash Press.