We went to Valentino’s after The Fight

There is a supermarket in Ridgewood Queens

where registers are stocked

with Albanian women who chew

English like a mouthful of sweet

gum. They’re Albanian

women who sing loud and billowing

Italian across aisles of green and red

produce. Albanian women

laughing, in Greek and sometimes

Spanish. The blue ceiling echoes

Albanian women you’ve never met,

handing you a plastic bag and asking

for your hands.

Calling you Honey, Bella, Kopelia, Chiquita before

they look up

from their work and into you

they whisper Zemer,

because they know just from the look

of you. 

The Albanian women

look at your mother

elevator eyes scanning 

sloped shoulders

long sleeves

bloody cuticles

cheekbones carrying

bruises turned yellow

finally

tight smiles as fingers ringed with old gold tie up

a bag of yellow peppers. 

Albanian women smile

at your father with his scars

faraway eyes and

far away voices

over the loudspeaker

call him

Sir

up and down

it echoes the aisles

the blue ceiling shrieks

and all the immigrants turn

Sir

because they know,

They know just from the look of him.