I remember Nancy Boers’ mother in her pin curls at the kitchen table drinking iced tea when someone knocked on the back door, and Mrs. Boers said: If you’re white, alright; if you’re black, get back! And how that shocked me, 12 years old. And how the person at the door was a black delivery man. Mrs. Boers looked only a little bit embarrassed, and the man not at all. I guess he was used to it.

After that, I always thought only the most uneducated people drank iced tea, and have never been able to drink it to this day.

Dotty LeMieux

writes both poetry and poetic memoir. She has five chapbooks published, including two during the pandemic: Viruses, Guns and War (Main Street Rag, 2023) and Henceforth I Ask Not Good Fortune (Finishing Line Press, 2021). Her writing has appeared in numerous print and online journals such as Gyroscope, MacQueen’s Quinterly, The Poeming Pigeon, Poets Reading the News, Rise Up Review, and Writers Resist, among others.

MacQueen’s Quinterly nominated her CNF Spring Trip to Mazatlán for Best of the Net 2024.