white sangria - nat raum

[cw: alcohol and sexual violence]

i learned the rules of fermentation in the summertime

while paddle-stirring the honeydew cantaloupe pineapple

greenapple dissolving into buckets of white wine and peach

schnapps. we deemed it sludge fit only for dish-pit sink

drains after five or six days dragged in and out of heat.

one august night i snapped the neck of a flower-vase pitcher

pouring sangria into glasses tableside. come memorial day,

requests trickled then flooded for this light gold peachmelon

nectar and as baltimore july drifted in with the horseflies,

i poured bucket after bucket into grates once everyone

remembered this was the wrong kind of sweet. this was

the cloying venom that stowed away under tongues to be drawn

out of crevices later, when the sun goes down and the neons

peppering the orange-cast streets shine lights paint age

on my face. the night i snapped the pitcher neck, i didn’t bleed

just then, but later and from elsewhere besides my hands. tucked

into a dim red corner bathroom stall pressed to a stranger’s body,

i became the aqua vitae. i became the sweating vase of chablis

and fruit, satin on palates and sugar sticking to hands. after ten

minutes, i am sink drain sludge. i am the wrong kind of sweet.

Originally published by perhappened, April 2022

nat raum is a disabled artist, writer, and genderless disaster based on unceded Piscataway and Susquehannock land in Baltimore. They’re the editor-in-chief of fifth wheel press. Their writing has been published with Allium, Broadkill Review, Split Lip Magazine, ANMLY, and others. Find them online: natraum.com