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      November 3, 2023Diet CokeLexi Pelle

      All I saw my mother drink
      for years. In the diner, served
      with a striped straw and shredded
      paper beanie or sometimes
      at Stop & Shop just before checkout,
      its perfect plastic body pulled from
      the squat fridge that sits underneath
      the conveyor belt—but most often
      sipped from a silver can on the porch.
      She never asked for ice. Never dared
      to dilute the fizzy pollution of artificial
      sweeteners. The first time I tried it
      I thought it tasted like a backhanded
      compliment, surprisingly good,
      the dark dizzying lake like a cactus
      burped Splenda into my mouth.
      The flavor so far from milk or juice,
      like a fresh-squeezed robot, a supermodel’s
      saliva. My sister and I sat around her
      like the students of Socrates and watched her
      succumb to the only sweetness she ever allowed
      herself. A true mother, listening
      to the questions it spat into the air,
      voice lifted at the end of every swallowed
      sentence. Let’s play the quiet game?
      she suggested on long car trips
      to Hershey or to one of Kate’s soccer
      tournaments and only then could we all hear it
      whisper to her from the cup holder
      as a speed bump puddled the lid
      and she brought the spill to her lips.

      from #81 - Fall 2023

      Lexi Pelle

      Prompt: “This poem was written in an Ellen Bass workshop. Bass asked us to write poems with ‘thingitude’ or poems that use and celebrate the observation of the real. We looked at Thomas Lux’s poetry, with a focus on his poem ‘Refrigerator, 1957’. Bass asked us to pay close attention to the sounds, humor, and asides in Lux’s poem and, afterwards, to try to incorporate some of that vibrancy into our own work.”

      “Years ago I read The Creative Habit by Twyla Tharp. In it she says, ‘Before you can think out of the box, you have to start with a box.’ Prompt poems give me that box. Like poets who use form to aid their ideas, I sometimes need a good prompt to get me writing.”

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