Skip to Content

Search: {{$root.lsaSearchQuery.q}}, Page {{$root.page}}

Poems Submitted for April 26, 2021

  1. Humanities Career Connections Workshops
  2. High Stakes Culture Series
  3. High Stakes Art
  4. Jill S. Harris Memorial Lecture
  5. Marc and Constance Jacobson Lecture
  6. Norman Freehling Visiting Professorship
  7. Past Programs & Projects
    1. (Re)Emergence: Asian American Histories and Futures
    2. Humanities Without Walls Predoctoral Career Diversity Summer Workshop
    3. Humanities Without Walls
    4. 2023 Humanities Afrofutures
    5. 2022 HWW Career Diversity Workshop
    6. 2022 Poetry Blast!
    7. Octavia Butler Week
    8. 2021 Poetry Blast!
      1. Prompt a Poem!—A Daily April Poetry Challenge
      2. English Translations
      3. 2021 Poetry Blast Prompt a Poem Submissions
      4. Poems Submitted for April 1, 2021
      5. Poems Submitted for April 2, 2021
      6. Poems Submitted for April 5, 2021
      7. Poems Submitted for April 6, 2021
      8. Poems Submitted for April 7, 2021
      9. Poems Submitted for April 8, 2021
      10. Poems Submitted for April 12, 2021
      11. Poems Submitted for April 9, 2021
      12. Poems Submitted for April 13, 2021
      13. Poems Submitted for April 14, 2021
      14. Poems Submitted for April 15, 2021
      15. Poems Submitted for April 16, 2021
      16. Poems Submitted for April 19, 2021
      17. Poems Submitted for April 20, 2021
      18. Poems Submitted for April 21, 2021
      19. Poems Submitted for April 22, 2021
      20. Poems Submitted for April 23, 2021
      21. Poems Submitted for April 26, 2021
      22. Poems Submitted for April 27, 2021
      23. Poems Submitted for April 28, 2021
      24. Poems Submitted for April 29, 2021
      25. Poems Submitted for April 30, 2021
    9. The Humanities at Work
    10. 2018-19 Year of Humanities and Environments
    11. 2017-18 Year of Archives & Futures
    12. 2016-17 Year of Humanities & Public Policy
    13. 2015-16 Year of Conversions
    14. Early Modern Conversions Project
    15. MCubed Humanities Projects
    16. Author's Forum

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.