Gabriela Bittencourt

Gabriela Bittencourt is a Brazilian-American poet from South Florida. She holds an English degree from FAU. She was the Fall 2022 Brooklyn Poets Fellow and was featured in Voyage MIA and ShoutOut as one of South Florida's emerging poets. She is the award recipient of the 2023 New York State Summer Writers Institute Poetry Scholarship. Other works can be found in Mystic Owl magazine and The Acentos Review.

Ode to o cafezinho da tarde

Not to be mistaken

with your morning brew

or $7 cup from Starbucks,

$7 — good grief! Friends,

every afternoon,

between 3 and 5 o’clock,

I pour hot water into

a stained cloth filter over

fine powder from which

rises an aroma of that place

my heart’s frenzy comes from.

Indeed, there is no greater delight

than slipping into the sweet song of slurry

which raises my droopy eyelids,

animates my waning breath,

and suddenly I’m given a second life,

blooming with acacias within me,

I begin to see things

like my mother at the table

sipping her cafezinho, indulging in cream crackers,

enveloped in a sanctified silence, which if we’re

lucky we get once, maybe twice, a year.

I join her and together we silence,

my hand in hers, her thumb caressing

the inside of my palm. O, if only

in real life we were this tender.