Gabby Reed

Even If You Want To

Liquor rained from the sky today.
I kept my mouth shut but I know the sting of gin
on my face, will know it til I'm dead.

All around me umbrellas and the assholes
letting it spill off and into the gutter. Slow
runnels of honey bourbon and slick vodka rills.

A wealth of oblivion, the people walking through it
like it's nothing like they're not parched like I'm not
here with my tongue fat and dry, blinking

wine from my eyes.

Gabby Reed is a Filipina-American writer and poet who hails variously from Tagaytay, Philadelphia, Seattle, Madison, and Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Her fiction has appeared in Comma Press, Lightspeed, Strange Horizons, and is upcoming in Bahamut Journal. Her poetry has appeared in Liminality, and at Strange Horizons.