Tang Orange Drink Mix

The sales pitch was to tell you
astronauts drank me in outer space.
It’s true. John Glenn and I did
have a fling on his 1962 Mercury flight
and that made me popular, for a little while.
Only because you thought NASA invented me.
But no, I was always just my sweet powdery self
until someone mixed me with water
and stirred me. John Glenn never

loved me. The way some men don’t
really love the women they drink up
and put back on a shelf afterwards.

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Lisa Zimmerman’s poetry collections include How the Garden Looks from Here (Violet Reed Haas Poetry Award winner), The Light at the Edge of Everything (Anhinga Press), and Sainted (Main Street Rag). Her poetry and fiction have appeared in Redbook, The Sun, Cave Wall, Hole in the Head Review, and other journals. Her poems have been nominated for Best of the Net, five times for the Pushcart Prize anthology, and included in the 2020 Best Small Fictions anthology.