Sunday Morning at the YMCA
I pull out of the pool
30 minutes worth of laps
breath and bubbles calm
wipe my eyes and look up at Saddleback Mountain
and a brown gray cloud just beyond
I smell the chlorine on my skin
camouflaging the smoke
I turn to the spa where white
men are laughing.
talking of being free
from wives and girlfriends
free from empathy and in
the better company of men.
And no one else smells smoke.
White men in the spa
laughing. All this climate change
over exaggeration. Over beers.
Look at all that snow they got up in Big Bear.
Women worry their pretty little heads.
Over nothing. Invisible, I slip my way
Into the spa the way older women turn sexless.
I am a spy with my little crone eyes. And the jets
sooth my muscles even if the talk
infuriates. There will be no fires this year.
Too wet. In which California do they live?
White men in the spa are laughing.
A brew of old bros. The younger
generation just doesn’t know how to fight
Fire with fire.
White men in the spa are laughing.
There is snow on the mountain and a slate gray sky
palm trees in the foreground. What could possibly
go wrong?
And I burn down their houses with my smile.
Margaret Elysia Garcia is the author of the poetry collection the daughterland poems (El Martillo Press, 2023), of the short story collection Graft (Tolsun Books, 2022), and the poetry chapbook Burn Scars, (Lit Kit Collective, 2022). She was a reporter for