Poems Submitted for April 26, 2021

Today you invent a beverage from the same abstraction. Is it carbonated? Is it served hot? Is it bitter or sweet, intoxicating or sour? Now—keep going. Does it come in a can? What’s its favorite song? Has it ever been in love with another beverage? What happens to it when you drink it? What happens to YOU when you drink it?

Sparkle, Bubble and Fizz
By Deborah Rebeck Ash

If I were inventing a drink, it would be pink.
No artificial sickening sweet qualities I think
Just natural good-for-you refreshing ingredients
Something that takes time and ferments
Giving a taste that’s a little bit fruity
With nature’s best maybe even a tad woody.
It might be sweet with a slightly sour kick.
I’ll put in some ice and a cute swizzle stick.
This concoction will sparkle, bubble and fizz.
Transparent. Refracting. Is.
Liquid refreshment active with enzymes
Beneficial lactobacilli and maybe some limes.
Aged long enough to have plenty of ions
I’ll save some future batch-making scions.
A sugar water bacteria stew
Sealed in glass, the mixture to brew.
When sipped, it is pleasantly tasty
Entering my system, not too hasty
My essence, aura and insight.
Harmonious organs feel firefly light.
Sparkle, bubble, fizz—actions lively, vibrant
My life effervescent, bottled for other’s enjoyment.
What am I waiting for? I, too, thirst for this potion.
I’ll make it. Please join me. I made a ton.

My diet cola is complaining [Tanka version]
By Renée Szostek

I uplift you each
morning, yet you are thinking
of not drinking me
anymore. Is my fizzy
flavor becoming a bore?

My diet cola is complaining [Haiku version]
By Renée Szostek

I uplift you each
morning, yet you are thinking
of not drinking me.

Green River
By Logan Corey

No, it’s a totally normal
side effect, really,
something to do
with vitamin C
and the curve of the toilet
bowl

Tincture of Tintern

Three parts
sycamore, one part woods –
a trace of hedgerow –
that best potion
of a man’s life.
                              Drink it
and recover the creature
you are: indistinguishable
from silence: source, spirit,
spring.

Liquid Gold
By S. Atticus O.

Fill the bottle with Gold
Good man, no can for me
Sing, Daddyo, Over the Rainbow,
While I drain this sweet

Frothy bit o’ warm
Burns so good as it goes
Down this little liquid gold
Drunkard’s gullet to his toes

Gimme more colostrum, ‘tender,
Gimme my rostrum, I’ll cry
Singing for late mothers
Sipping gold all the while.