Moon Cola - Issue 3 - Hot Girl Summer Bummer

M O O N

I S S U E

C O L A

3

P R E S E N T S

J U L Y

2 0 2 2

AFTER DRINKING PEACH SPICE & MOON COLA Indigo Carter

CROSSING BEE LB

DELUSIONS Andrea Hansgen

COMO BUENA MEXICANA Olga Montenegro

TENDENCIES Goldie Peacock

SEX DREAMS ON THE GRAYSON HIGHLANDS Nik Moore

ON MY LUNCH BREAK WAITING FOR MY STI TEST RESULTS Emily Oomen

IF THOU REALLY MUST LOVE ME Amanda Malone

PRAISE FOR A COLOR John Spiegel

MY KINGDOM WAS BEAUTIFUL Jennessa Hester

MY MESSY YEAR Lucia Gallipoli

FLORIDA 2020 Caleb Sanchez

FALLING ASLEEP TO THE SOUND OF MY VIBRATOR Megan Mary Moore

THE NECTAR OF LOVE Alexandra McIntosh

UNTITLED Gabriela Godinez Feregrino

After Drinking Peach Spice & Moon Cola After the fruits have been peeled and the drinks are spilled and the boys and girls devour each other under the canopy and all language has been stripped of its clothes I drink moon cola with a mouthful of flowers and hungry lips that taste of peach spice. Clean-cut grass that rips the stitches of my skirt, lets me bleed underneath a sliver of light until I let my lips drift to the mouth of a lover and kiss it drunkenly, clutch hair — with seduction, more terribly, let his hands run through the slits in my clothes until my body feels displaced to the ill-lit sky and I swallow summer (what sweet boy) with hunger

Indigo Carter - 4

after TC Tolbert when you hold me there are words for that i do not remember the words for that but i remember that there are words. if you’d just pull me close i’d whisper them in your ear and then we’d both know. but you won’t so i won’t and even if you did i wouldn’t be brave enough to and i miss every chance i don’t take which means i miss nearly everything. there are not words for when you do not hold me yet i only write when i’m not in your arms which is most of the time. there are not words for when you do not hold me and so there are never words. there are not words for when you do not hold me and so i am always swallowing my tongue. there are not words for when you do not hold me and so i am always reaching for you to hold me and i am always wanting to swallow your tongue. when i say i love you what i really mean is why can’t i change?

BEE LB - 5

Delusions You brought me yellow flowers You kissed me in your kitchen And in your bed And between my thighs.

You held my hand in the target self-checkout line.

The uncharted territories of desire 72 hours of blissful escapism In a city I didn’t know, with a girl I had memorized Before that weekend I spent hours staring back at you through a screen Sometimes four or six I blinked and the sun had gone down In your room and in mine, separated by 78 miles.

Now I have no clue when the sun goes down where you are Or what you made for dinner Or what you dreamed about.

I don’t know where you went And you tell me it’s fine and you’re fine and I’m fine and we’re fine and you’re sorry.

But it doesn’t feel like you’re sorry.

Andrea Hansgen - 6

I still dream about you.

Or was I always dreaming?

Was I sleeping in unfamiliar arms?

Or my twin sized bed in the suburbs?

I need you back but I’m not sure you even exist.

I sent you a package in the mail Through a portal to another dimension Where we were happy and drunk and you wanted me.

Como buena mexicana Me mandaste a volar is such a funny phrase: It means you sent me off to fly somewhere Diana, Alison, and Marina all took me on a trip to Oaxaca and while I was busy drinking, Ali deleted your number because they knew que te amaba.

The risk of losing my dignity, “too high” they said.

told me.)

(a sufrir como buena mexicana, they

After getting lost in Zipolite with vultures flying over our heads and our breasts exposed in this empty nude beach, The mighty birds announced that the great Zapotec gods were frustrated with our lack of direction and offerings.

I decide to confess in drunken stupor that I didn’t love you anymore, chingada madre.

Agua, I said. I needed water. Vital things that love cannot compete with.

Olga Montenegro - 8

We start laughing, alone in this remote beach in México that holds our secrets till this day and I realized that I could fly off to belong somewhere, anywhere, that wasn’t the memory of you.

Y allí estuve, far away from you with six missed calls from a ghostly number I was made to fly far from.

Tendencies That Maine summer, we watched starlings murmurate from our wood deck seats.

“It’s not like we’re alcoholics,” I said.

“No,” you said, handing me another beer, “but we’ve got Tendencies, you know? You know.”

Tendencies Tendencies Tendencies Tendencies Tendencies Tendencies

to to to to to to

just one more one too many shouldn’t have but I did sorry why

That Maine summer, you would cheat on your girlfriend of four years. Couldn’t help yourself. You know? You know.

Goldie Peacock - 10

Thirteen years later, you still live in Maine.

You have a wife and baby now. Do you still have Tendencies?

I wonder. Does your eye still wander? Cells all regenerate, so they say. We’ll soon be twice new people.

This Maine summer, as you sit on your wood deck seat, will the starlings murmurate?

Nik Moore - 12

On My Lunch Break Waiting for My STI Test Results I’m eating on the steps outside the hospital, and all I taste is black. People pass by going about their lives as I’m a still thunderstorm with a shadow of fear inside of me slingshotting me back. My vagina is a ghost haunting me.

How could this happen?

I reach into my bag for a napkin, and a condom I forgot was in there smirks. So smug despite the fact it didn’t protect me from this.

I guess the fairy slut-mother they always told me would come to girls like me has finally struck me with her wand that doubles as a dildo.

Is this goodbye to my reign as a one-night stand goddess winking through the night? No. Call me a slut, skank, tramp all rolled into one. I’ll build a cathedral of whores out of all this shame. I sit still, and the phone rings.

Emily Oomen - 14

if t h o u r e a l l y m u s t lo v e m e if thou rea lly must, l et it be fo -y, evinced r naught in the heat of goblin m the market’ ode s hot, come buy to my a I’ve change bode d, or you h ave change, another roo m y love so b mmate moved ought out today, dollars tea gold ring up lik e clumps of green remin furze, ever ders that w h en we’re to our rent-ch gether eck money i ncreases tw is it love, ofold or is the c ost of livi a feral cre ng ature only we can tame though the landlord ma y be unforg let’s squee iving ze each oth er’s fruits each pound of labor, c of flesh, a laim s long as w an apartmen e ’ re kissing t’s not jus t an absent dream

Amanda Malone - 15

John Spiegel - 16

My Ki ngdom Was Bea utiful Mama, I was a princess until the waves came a-crashing and washed my people away to drown in the sandy belows.

As she packs up the towels I can still see them down there alone, alone, but glistening as they gasp uselessly for air.

Don’t make me go home, mama, where I will never be a princess and the boys make mean at my people because we shimmer in life and death.

Jennessa Hester - 17

M e s s y Y e a r

Lucia Gallipoli - 18

M y

You penciled me in for Friday night so I penciled you in indefinitely: you, floating over the table at a girl’s night in Nolita like a ghost too wrapped up in his own holiness to haunt me more graciously, never the colloquial verb.

“No, no, he’s better looking in person— his pictures on here are terrible, really nauseating, actually, I’m mortified by his profile too.”

You followed me into my therapist’s office too, which was pretty weird until my therapist followed me into your apartment while your roommates were out.

You ordered me Grubhub and bought me incidental avocado rolls and the seaweed wrapped around them might as well have been a ring or a noose, and what was the difference, and I tried on your running shorts— the kind of fabric that is killing the planet, aptly— and you said “give me back my shorts,” jokingly, high, and I replied, “my shorts,” and you looked me dead in the eyes, and then my guts spilled onto the floor, where they remained until I cleaned up my messy year.

Caleb Sanchez - 19

Falling Asleep to the Sound of My Vibrator Not white noise - it’s pink and pink noise isn’t the plastic bang against linoleum that I thought it would be.

It’s a human hum, soft, and naked, deeper than white, and warmer.

And it smells like steady rain on summer skin.

I’m free — or maybe feral, slipping to the place where bubbles go when they pop.

Megan Mary Moore - 21

The Nectar of Love In your car, on the way to Yellow Springs, you pause our shared playlist halfway through a Beach Boys’ track to show me “Prabhujee” by Ravi Shankar.

Brian Wilson is your type, you say, like you’ve figured something out. You like sad artists.

In the ceramic shop, on the trail by the creek, setting up our campsite—all day I wait for you to touch me. Around the fire we take turns with your guitar. I watch your hands in the dark and remember their warmth against my neck, my hips. Later in the tent I ask what’s wrong but I already know you’re thinking of her. Today would’ve been 7 years. We end things but I ask to kiss. You say no. I can’t sleep so I drive home.

Just before I leave you remember a bottle of rosé you brought for me. We hug around it, the cool glass leaving droplets on our tee shirts. Long stretch of road, Ohio moon, Shankar’s prayer.

I have been searching for you all over the world.

Silhouettes of oak and hickory. Please come and hold my hand now. The sadness is sweet, I realize I’m savoring it. The city comes into view, I take the long way. This is my favorite part.

Alexandra McIntosh - 22

Untitled love leaves a bitter dewdrop after a midnight fight insecurity fogs and settles on unkempt grass drops drip into the roots unfiltered the bright yellow of a black-eyed susan screams the uncertainty cultivated the weeds grow stronger deemed weed by seer alone but the bees still kiss all the buds to make their not so bitter honey

Gabriela Godinez Feregrino - 23

The Credits Managing Editors Gabriela Godinez Feregrino Alex McIntosh Editors Haley Hulett Megan Mary Moore Cover art & Layout Gabriela Godinez Feregrino

@MoonColaZine MoonColaZine.com