“Pink Lemonade” is one of four menacing yet vulnerable poems by Gabriela Garcia in our Spring 2018 issue.

{ X }

YOU WAKE IN THE DARK
& are not suicidal
so much as flirting
with the look of it
the way you consider
pie under glass at
a diner, polished
& dark red beneath
a cross-hatched top.
Who really sits down
at the diner & orders
just a slice of pie.
It would probably
taste like all those
things you could
never eat as a child,
like chugging pink
lemonade at the barbecue
because it was never
allowed in the house
unless there was company
over. It would taste
like the first time
someone sucked your
tits & didn’t call.
Our bodies have all been
through the desert.
We’ve all had a mirage
of water on the blank
ceiling & wondered
what it might be like
to take a sip.

{ X }

GABRIELA GARCIA is a Pushcart Prize nominee whose work has appeared or is forthcoming in North American Review, Word Riot, No Dear and elsewhere. She is a James Hearst Poetry Prize finalist, the founder of the podcast On Poetry, and an MFA candidate at Columbia University, where she serves as Poetry Editor for Columbia Journal.