Virgin Mojito
MARION CLINE
Mom decided one summer
that her drink was a virgin mojito.
Each time it is too sweet for her,
but she brings it down like a hummingbird.
Then she fills the glass with tap water.
Nobody offers her tap water in Catalonia.
So she takes the glass of limp and oxidizing
mint and lime to the bathroom.
Mom is rigid on the bill. She is sure
they are ripping her off.
Mom is frigid over the pool people.
They are ripping her off.
They have printed a yellow stain on the bottom.
The stain is growing.
Mom gets tipsy easily.
She tells my lover:
we have standards here,
we have standards for purity.
MARION CLINE is a poet and literary translator who dabbles in a style that aims to frame reality in its truest form. The divine perspective or the absolute truth for her is portrayed by an objective monotone that inherently betrothed itself to subjectivity and everlasting dichotomies. She plays with word collage and fragmentary monologue, cinematic vignettes. She will receive her BFA in creative writing and translation from the University of Iowa and is the author of the chapbooks Fruit (2024), Every Maria (2024) and Abundant Life (2025). Her poetry has appeared in Whurk, Virginia Cultural Review for the poem “winter, inferno” (2017), Wyrd, Midwestern DIY Review for the poem “The Origin of Dreams” (2024), Brio, and NYU Literary Magazine for the poems “women on the verge” and “fatigue” (2024).
