Monday, October 21, 2019

LA CROIX

I've think I've finally
got it: all these fancy
flavored seltzer waters 
taste less like a dream 
than a dream the next 
morning—one which we 
barely remember having 
but feel unusually desperate 
to describe later. 
All we remember is that 
we were seven 
and washing down pizza 
and sheet cake with 
Orange Slice, 7UP, 
50/50, or Upper 10, 
something like that—
at a pizza party 
in the loud neon arcade 
of throbbing black-
lit bowling alley.
Everyone there 
was equally poor
at bowling; everyone's favorite 
band was Salt-N-Pepa, 
so no one argued;
and the grown-ups, too
were like friendly ghosts or 
sentinels in the corner,
the way they were hanging 
back and chatting and really
getting into their cigarettes.