Mexican tacos in Paris
look like thick rolled cigars,
if cigars had meat inside.
They dance Bachata.
Their feet move in confusion.
The sirens here remind me
of a wretchedness
I cannot place,
maybe something I heard
in a book. European unrest
over deboned white fish.
In Le Marais, I told a Canadian
from Morocco, here lies a chef.
I felt his fingers tremble
as he felt my palms for shucking oysters.
Nothing in its right place
but there we were
walking in the time of Daguerre
on water with our hands
on the mouths of our purses.
Go to Paris. Let it change you.
When you arrive back
warily on a buddy pass,
you say you are not easily impressed.
In the Seine of truth, you are easily lonely
at the Eiffel,
in the Louvre, you smile
with a nose your father called big.
Into the camera you go,
your thrown self
in front of Mona Lisa.
Shauna Barbosa is the author of the poetry collection Cape Verdean Blues (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2018). Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in The Southeast Review, Boulevard, Lit Hub, Lenny Letter, Virginia Quarterly Review, Foundry, Wildness, The Atlas Review, PANK, and others. She is a 2018 Disquiet International Luso-American fellow. Shauna received her MFA from Bennington College in Vermont and currently resides in Los Angeles, California.