"Smoke on the Water" • Deep Purple (by Kathryn Kysar)

We were cool with Kool 100s, not the fake candy

cigarettes from the convenience store with the broken

linoleum and kids with notes for their parents’ Pal Malls.

Long brown Virginia Slims to make us thin and beautiful.

Once, we got kicked out of a dingy diner for smoking

Djarums, the clove cigarettes that stung our mouths,

numbed our lips. The dawning addiction on McDonald’s

breaks at linoleum tables with their little tinfoil trays.

The car-exhaust blackened snow as we stood thumbs out,

hoping for a passed joint, smoky party house, the obscurity

of a darkened basement, the bass thumping, our insecurities

hidden as we posed our jeans-covered skinny legs and flat

chests, Salems extended, tapping the long ashes into full

ashtrays, girls trying to be women in all the wrong ways.

Kathryn Kysar is the 2025 winner of the Association of Writers and Writing Program’s George Garrett Award for Outstanding Service to Literature and recipient of a 2024 Creative Individual Minnesota State Arts Board grant in creative nonfiction. Her poetry books include Dark Lake and Pretend the World, and she edited Riding Shotgun: Women Write About Their Mothers.  She has recently published in About Place Journal, The Fourth River, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Slag Glass City, and Water~Stone Review. She is the creative writing program founder and English professor at Anoka-Ramsey Community College and teaches poetry writing at the Loft Literary Center. She lives near the Mississippi River, where she drives East River Road late at night blasting rock and roll.  Social tags: Facebook and Bluesky: Darklake; Instagram and Threads: Pretend the World.