WHEN I REALIZED I COULD BE UNSEEN
By Lisa Favicchia

When I Realized I Could Be Unseen

It was a fishing rod,
one I waved to go home.
It was also a log I became
trapped under, ferret hole
cradling my lungs.
My father said not to walk
on water-rot wood—
I ignored him, and lay 
along the scorch lines
of skipping stones
as he laughed, foot heavy
on the bark.

Where I had once gulped
I now allowed myself
to become blue-gilled,
ignored his tug
at my lip beneath
the silt-stirred water.
I even made myself bluer
until I was satisfied
no eyes would see me
through saw-grass.

I Think I Might Be a Birch Tree

Don’t break my roots,
my ruptured feet, snap them
from the ground. I might bleed
milk and if milk bleeds out
so must I. Head is not
laurel-crowned, just tired
living inside all these eyes.
I cradle, or am cradled
by awakeness, or too many
visions, but maybe not
divinable visions, maybe
just me looking at me,
birch-bark arms and lungs
only leaf-cough. Something
lives inside me sometimes
in my owl hollows,
now twisted knots
where I once tried to heal
hair from hair. 

Wishing for a Tooth Fairy

She picks at herself
in the dusk-filled garden
where sharp teeth gnaw
paper wings. She kneels
down, twigs peppering
her hair, and slaps a tiny body
against her arm. As blood
and twitching limbs dry, her hair sticks
and pinches her irritated skin.

She picks at the bites and mixes
the animal blood.
At the sound of her name
she rises, snaps a stomach tooth
from her gums, adds it
to the mound of shining molars.

She makes her way back
to the door where she knows
she’ll find only shriveled skin
and blanched collar bones,
though she’ll always try to listen
for calcified knuckles
under the floorboards.

A Study in Common Terns

You keep so much in hiding
yet forget your own
quaking margin and slip
on silt. The sound is the same
in every direction; I mean
plum pudding, the trudge
of your feet the same
as sludge-slow salt marsh
or a feather caught
in the under-grist.

You can leave yourself
where you fall, though, dwell
in swamp and half-rot fern.
Just lie in this frog slough;
soon enough your skin
will be the same color
and you’ll no longer have to fear
the loss of feathers,
no longer have to wade
through open water.

About the Author:

Lisa Favicchia is a recent graduate of the MFA program at Bowling Green State University and the former Managing Editor of Mid-American Review. Her work has appeared in Vine Leaves Literary Journal and Wordpool Press, among others, and is forthcoming in Rubbertop Review.