{"id":9165,"date":"2026-02-22T13:56:17","date_gmt":"2026-02-22T20:56:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.jerseydevilpress.com\/?page_id=9165"},"modified":"2026-02-22T13:56:17","modified_gmt":"2026-02-22T20:56:17","slug":"big-k-watermelon-kiwi-soda","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"http:\/\/www.jerseydevilpress.com\/?page_id=9165","title":{"rendered":"Big K Watermelon Kiwi Soda"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Patrick G. Roland<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I had a hankering for some Big K Watermelon Kiwi soda. I told Angela you can only find it at Kroger. The grocery store. Angela said she\u2019d try anything once. I agreed with her. We hopped into my gray \u201999 Grand Am. On the way there, I told her about my history with Big K Watermelon Kiwi soda. How it didn\u2019t taste like watermelon or kiwi. It was melokwi. I found it by itself on the bottom shelf. How the mutated fluorescent green of the liquid inside the clear bottle made the bottom shelf look futuristic. The pink label gave it a retro look, even though retro was out of style at the time. She said retro was never in style. We agreed to disagree, but I agreed, retro is always current until later. But today is not a day for philosophical musings I said. This is a Big K Watermelon Kiwi soda day. The day Angela\u2019s buds will transcend their current form. I slammed the door of my Grand Am and said I\u2019ll race you. I took off, left her in the dust. She called for me, but when you got Big K Watermelon Kiwi soda on the brain, it\u2019s hard to concentrate on chivalry. I usually let her win our races. She doesn\u2019t know we race, but I always let her get to doors first and then hop in front of her to grab the handle and ease it open with a slight curtsy. Because the first one to touch the handle always wins. I walked up to the light switch near aisle 23 and turned it off. Angela followed me to the bottom shelf. I took out my flashlight and aimed it at the row of Big K Watermelon Kiwi sodas. The whole aisle glowed in a green slime light. Angela was impressed. She said wow. Someone in a Kroger vest turned the lights back on and Angela and I carried two 2 liters to the self-checkout. I put the bottles under my shirt so the sunlight wouldn\u2019t prematurely marry the flavors. An old soda-slinger trick. Angela said soda-slingers never had tricks. As we walked between the sliding glass doors a lady in front of us said, hey, what\u2019s under your shirt? Big K Watermelon Kiwi soda, I said. Angela is going to try it for the first time. Oh, it\u2019s a big day for Angela the lady said. Get ready for your piss to turn green. It is a whole body experience I agreed. Angela and I carried the sodas to the car. I buckled both bottles into the back seat. She said that was unnecessary. I said safety is never unnecessary. At a red light she asked if melokwi was really a word. I said it was now. She said neologisms are cheap. I said so is Big K but that doesn\u2019t make them undefinable. She didn\u2019t laugh. We pulled into my lot. I carried one bottle under my shirt up the stairs. It felt warm against my stomach. Angela followed with the other, but didn\u2019t press it against her skin. We sat on the couch. I twisted the cap. It hissed like a bathtub full of beetles. I poured two glasses. She said it smelled like antifreeze. I said don\u2019t think of it like that. Think of it like antifreeze that went to college. She said that didn\u2019t help. She took a sip anyway. She made a face. Said it didn\u2019t taste like watermelon or kiwi. I said exactly. It\u2019s melokwi. She said melokwi tastes like window cleaner. I nodded. I said sometimes you have to clean the windows to see what\u2019s really there. She put the glass down. I kept drinking. Later that night I woke up thirsty. I opened the fridge. The soda glowed in the dark like a reactor. The sun must have wedded the flavors too early. Angela was gone. The half-empty pack of toilet paper under the sink was gone too. Survival rations. I checked outside. A Pepsi truck idled near the stoop. I sat the Big K Watermelon Kiwi soda in her spot on the couch. Buckled it in beside me. We were two now. I stared at it until everything went dim and I was sucked backward into the green glow, a whole body of liquid around me, flavorless, drifting, retro, futuristic, infinite. I saw Angela in the passenger seat of the truck as I drifted upward into a future already retro.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

PATRICK G. ROLAND<\/strong>\u00a0is a writer and educator living with cystic fibrosis. He enjoys exploring other people\u2019s attics and basements, where most of his writing ideas are created and sometimes lost. He lives near Pittsburgh. His work appears or is forthcoming in\u00a0Hobart,Not One of Us,3Elements, scaffold, Maudlin House, Literary Garage,\u00a0<\/em>and others.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Patrick G. Roland I had a hankering for some Big K Watermelon Kiwi soda. I told Angela you can only find it at Kroger. The grocery store. Angela said she\u2019d try anything once. I agreed with her. We hopped into … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":9159,"menu_order":6,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-9165","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/P15duy-2nP","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.jerseydevilpress.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/9165","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.jerseydevilpress.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.jerseydevilpress.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.jerseydevilpress.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.jerseydevilpress.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9165"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.jerseydevilpress.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/9165\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9175,"href":"http:\/\/www.jerseydevilpress.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/9165\/revisions\/9175"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.jerseydevilpress.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/9159"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.jerseydevilpress.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9165"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}