A History of Water | The Iowa Review

Gaby Garcia

Volume 49, Issue 1 — Spring 2019

Photo of river at surface level with green trees in the background.

Photo by Tyson Dudley on Unsplash

I let a blond boy pinch my tits
in a river.

It was like breathing for the first time
and then forgetting how.

It was like licking a dirty penny.
It was a new name.

He said finish it.
I drowned in the river

and reincarnated as a very small fish,
eating nothing

but cold slots of light.

He poured warm beer
over the rocks,

listing girl names

while planting
their bodies in the sand

like ancient statues.

Gaby Garcia is a Pushcart Prize nominee whose work has appeared in North American Review, No Dear Magazine, and elsewhere. She is a James Hearst Poetry Prize finalist, founder of the podcast On Poetry, and a creative writing teaching fellow at Columbia University, where she is completing her MFA in poetry.