Cold Gin and a Pandemic by Georgina Marie 

A swig of fresh lime squeezed over ice
San Francisco’s Junipero gin with a garnish
soothes the overwhelm of more bad news
and sudden heat 

What I learned at home today:

the length of estrangement becomes short
in comparison to the weight of regret 

one hundred more days of solitude – a poet’s irony

bare white walls wait with open-hearts 
to catch our sighs  

how much I miss my father now that he is dead.

Toss back tonic water with an extra kick
catch the sun warming the side of my face
through the glass door into the dining room 

and now the reflection 
of how many years have passed 

how the idea of a father became a ghost 
how a ghost haunted me into adulthood
how adulthood became a poem always in the works 
how poems became home

how hard it is to live inside this one 

*Poem originally appeared in the Lake County Bloom on May 28, 2020 https://www.lakecountybloom.com/cold-gin-and-a-pandemic-poetry-by-georgina-marie/

Georgina Marie is a poet from Lake County, Northern California and the current Lake County Poet Laureate for 2020-2022, the first Mexican-American and youngest to serve in this role for Lake County. She has participated in many readings within Lake County and surrounding counties, has served as co-editor for the Middletown Art Center’s RESILIENCE and RESTORE collections of written word and visual arts, and is an assistant poetry editor for Rivet Journal, an online literary journal from Red Bridge Press. As part of the Broken Nose Collective, an annual chapbook exchange, she created her first poetry chapbook, Finding the Roots of Water, in 2018 and her second chapbook, Tree Speak, in 2019. In 2020 she is working on her full-length manuscript.