Dorian Kotsiopoulos
Learning How Not to Choose a Lover
Once my father got a job to haul away hundreds
of cans of no-name soda that had been dumped
in a piggery. He brought them home.
Nothing wrong with this soda, he’d said, guzzling
a lemon/lime, so we drank generic soda trampled
by pigs so he wouldn’t accuse us of acting superior.
My father thought he was a landscaper,
but mostly he carted trash away from businesses
to the dump when he didn’t bring it home to us.
We got past-season lipsticks from Rexall, expired
Twinkies, plastic holiday wreaths one spring,
coverless romance novels from Woolworth’s.
My sisters and I spent a summer learning how not
to choose a lover from free steamy novels, fueled
by sugar, choosing soda cans with the least hoof dents.