Daiquiri, Up

Another poem by Maureen Langloss, “Every Cut has a Kerf,” is available now in print in issue 62. 

Lounging on sofa,
a film student

sipped the Hemingway
my husband made—

grapefruit twisted into
lime, white rum dripping

lip to lap, she
told us dialogue

is over, beside
the point. I

wondered if we
should stop talking.

I drank my Aviation,
savored the sour on

the sides of my
tongue. I never

saw her again
but thought of her 

when reading a
fancy article about

water, how it
corrupts skin, why

we should stop
applying two parts

hydrogen, one part
oxygen to our tender

aging faces. I
remember the plump

drops photographed
like fashion models

beside the article, her
maraschino breath, as

I splash my face,
wipe it dry with 

cloth I stole from
a Key West hotel. 

“How’s the weather?”
I ask my husband—

forehead against window
frame, looking out.

“Steady drizzle,” he says.
“Or maybe fog

from the sea.”

Note: The poem draws on phrases from The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway: “In the morning it was raining. A fog had come over the mountains from the sea … and in between the steady drizzle the rain came down and drove every one under the arcades…”