THREE POEMS by MATTHEW NISINSON
The Adventures of Odit A. Mowe
inspired by Catullus 85Opening the fridge on a Tuesday morning reveals half a bottle of coconut water, two slices of Hawaiian pizza on a greasy paper plate, a bag of wilted baby spinach, and a bottle of hot sauce to Odit’s half-lidded, red rimmed gaze. Odit looks at the pizza, blinks, generously pours hot sauce on a slice and takes a bite, chewing steadily beneath the light of the open fridge. She sighs, “I adore cold pizza for breakfast.”
Odit and a bottle of Fernet Branca take in the September air on this Tuesday night. A lone wisp of fraying cloud bisects the backwards C of a moon and Odit thinks longingly of the half croissant she didn’t take from the basket in the office kitchen that afternoon, scorning the soon stale remnant of someone else’s morning meeting, probably that guy Val, who stares at her like he hates her, or like she’s the stale croissant and he’s the one drunk on Fernet Branca. She takes a long sip from the bottle. “Why can’t we just let something be bitter?” She asks the cloud or the moon. “Some things are worth swallowing without sugar.”
Silence answers back and she takes another sip.
The hottest thing on the summer sidewalk is Odit, feeling herself as she prowls Broadway to the Union Square farmers market. Odit feels the City’s admiring glances, soft applause for her style as she lingers among the lettuces. Looking up, she sees soggy eyes on a fleece-vested pair of khaki pants that never learned not to stare. Odit fills her tote and shells out for the Uber home.
Matthew Nisinson (he/him) lives in Queens, NY with his wife and daughter and their two cats. He has a JD, and a BA in Latin. Each summer he grows chili peppers. By day he is a bureaucrat. His poetry has appeared in Boats Against the Current, en*gendered, Hyacinth Review, and Milk Press, among others. You can find him on Instagram or Threads @lepidum_novum_libellum and on Twitter and Bluesky @mnisinson.