By Vicki Iorio
Fire summer, when the house sparked
and the cats died, my daughter and I
drove the island from Gatsby’s North Shore
to the fish forks, pinballing in traffic to avoid
the smell of burnt bones. Joni, mandatory
music in the car. My daughter, seat belted
and buckled up learned my life did not
begin at her conception. I car-schooled
my daughter; old enough to know who broke
my heart, who will never break my heart,
the truth about her father. Blue in the CD player,
the perfect escape to a Grecian Isle and California.
We pulled into a McDonald’s off the Expressway,
chicken nuggets for her, black coffee for me.
My daughter fell asleep under a beach blanket
while listening to “Little Green.”
We drove into midnight.
Vicki Iorio writes because she can’t sing or do backflips. Nominated for a Pushcart Prize, she is the author of the poetry collections Poems from the Dirty Couch (Local Gems Press, 2013), Not Sorry (Alien Buddha Press, 2020) and the chapbooks Send Me a Letter (dancinggirlpress, 2015), Something Fishy (Finishing Line Press, 2018), and Blabbermouth (Alien Buddha Press, 2023). Her poetry has appeared in The San Pedro Review, Mom Egg Review, Crack the Spine, The Painted Bride Quarterly, The Fem Lit Magazine, Poetry Bay, and many other publications. When Vicki is not writing poetry she is sweating on her Peloton and when she is not on her Peloton, she is drinking a crisp white wine.