natalie marino
When Life Gives You Lemons
It is not that you do not
like lemons, but that
their sweet yellow
pies taste like plastic.
Men looking for consumers
paint lemonade pink
and you are given the idea
that you would rather have
lemon flavored sugar water,
so you keep trying it
in different restaurants.
You wonder why
you can’t fall in love.
You nod
when people say
how bitter lemons are,
while listening to trees.
Hometown
Los Angeles’ liberty lawns
keep their secrets in lemons
after swallowing blue pills.
Snow falls to its death here,
like faded indigo museums’
dried flowers displays next
to empty rooms playing film.
Los Angeles, full of loose
pearls, wakes to dirty dawns
on Skid Row and shallow
silver baby cups
who hold turquoise stones
from servants clutching sadness
as they watch Los Angeles
drag its door shut
before joy escapes from violets.
Natalie Marino is a writer, mother, and physician. She graduated with a BA in American Literature from UCLA. Her work appears or is forthcoming in Barren Magazine, Capsule Stories, Leon Literary Review, Literary Mama, Moria Online, Re-side, and other journals. She lives in Thousand Oaks, California.