Spotlight: LEMONADE

Googling flowers that sound country enough
to create my own lemon on a step
because it is smart to discuss a field
of goldenrods rather than the hood
flying up on the old eighty-four ford ranger
while we were doing seventy on seventy-five
because the truck was a lemon
held together by bungee cords, electrical tape, and prayer,
but lord, how you made lemonade,
and taught me to make it as well,
and to believe that discussing poverty
did not have to mean discussing trauma.
we sang songs, our own apartment building
hymnals, we took our WIC down
to save-a-lot to pick up communion
milk, juicy juice, a block of government cheese,
take a shopping cart to the corral for a quarter
spear soda cans on the side of the road
fire department fed us christmas dinner
and we thanked god we had it all

 

Tucker Leighty-Phillips is a student and writer living in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania. His work has recently appeared in Atlas Obscura, WhiskeyPaper, and Maudlin House.