We make short work of the steamed mussels, a good start to what promises to be a magical evening. A waiter on his way to the kitchen stop-whirls to our table and reaches for the emptied bowl.

“Not so fast!” Startled, the waiter steps back. Kim nudges it my way, knowing I will defer. She shrugs and, with scarcely concealed anticipation, lifts the bowl with both hands and carefully pours what’s left of the sea-seasoned sauce into her wine glass.

Mamma mia!
a passing busboy drops
his anchor tattoo

All eyes are on Kim as she lifts the wine glass to her lips, tilts it up, up a little higher—that one last sliver of garlic! The waiter stands by, watching my wife’s performance as if from a backstage wing. At last our star sets down her glass, sighs.

“You can take this, too. And bring a new one, per favore.”

“Naturalmente, signora!” He wipes the table and, glass in bowl, marches off to the beat of the accordionist’s spirited Funiculì, Funiculà.

la famiglia ristorante
Shirley Temple asks
for my umbrella

I salute
the cannelloni sauces
il Tricolore

squeezing the mic
the drunk diner drops to one knee
...I did it MYY WAAAY

zabaglione
the floor-to-ceiling fresco
of Mount Vesuvius

Too full to move, let alone get up and put on our coats, we linger in the candlelit alcove. A short, silver-haired man in a striped apron pulls up a chair, flashes a gold tooth. We take turns shaking hands with Tony, the chef/owner of this thriving enterprise on the far edge of town.

“What a night!” Tony wipes his brow with his apron, lights a cigarette. One twirl of his finger, and a waiter appears with three shot glasses and a bottle of limoncello.

“I’m happy to meet you—meet the woman like my sauce and a, drink a—outta wine glass! Alla salute!”

smoky grotto—
in floats la bella donna
on a scallop shell

—Published previously in Haiku Canada Review 16:2 (October 2022); appears here with author’s permission.

Chuck Brickley

is an American Canadian currently living in the San Francisco Bay Area. He coordinates six international contests for the Haiku Society of America. His haiku, senryu, haibun, and book reviews have been published in leading haiku journals and anthologies worldwide. His collection of haiku, earthshine (Snapshot Press, 2017, in its 4th printing), received the Touchstone Distinguished Book Award for 2017 (The Haiku Foundation), an Honorable Mention for the Haiku Society of America Merit Book Award for 2017, and an Honourable Mention for the Marianne Bluger Book Award for 2020 (Canada). One of his haibun was nominated for the Pushcart Prize (2018), and another for The Best Small Fictions 2019 (Sonder Press).

Author’s website: www.chuckbrickley.com