As Though Playing in Your Head

April 2025 | poetry

I fucked up my knitting in the sauna.

The wool fraying with sweat, animal

tiring of infrared, birds zorbing like

orbs of candles, by me, showering in

the dark. Alright, and the dog rotates

in the air above my bed in my sleep

she knows this is a different day the

rest are like a slice of sun, rolls down

the back of my calf, a remnant of

being a child, scales of lore, how old.

Everyone puts their face on my face.

Friend. Those students finished that

huge lasagne, snacking right next to

me. I realized how gross it sounds

when people cut up and eat a lasagne.

Alex Braslavsky

Alex Braslavsky is a poet, translator, and scholar. She is currently completing her dissertation on Polish, Czech, and Russian nonagenarian women poets and studying the relationship between aging and artmaking. Her poems are forthcoming in Rhino and The Indianapolis Review, among other journals. Her volume of translations of Zuzanna Ginczanka’s poetry was short-listed for the American Literary Translators’ Association First Translation Prize.

The Plum Thief

April 2025 | poetry

Dark sunset blooms above my veins,

Human valleys in marrow eruption.

Amaranthine plum-drip bruises

Mark me crimson thief, orchard’s fox.

Botanic sangria slither, my throat a pink road,

Summer’s death the wine of rot and endings.

Plum thief wears mortal wound,

Seeping fatality brands intruder.

Night beast creeping,

I wear hungry, changing skin.

Soft necks open at my suggestion, sing.

I am a girl as a seed is a contained thing,

an almost thing,

a will-be thing.

I, the slowest bomb, quietest eruption.

This valley will eject me,

The toothy citizen.

Verdant patina, jade of rot’s grasp,

Verdigris mold in resplendent, changeling smear.

I sleep in a pulsing, carmine hollow.

There are a dozen words for wound,

But I suppose my name shall suffice.

There is no place here for predators.

Skin perfumed with twilight’s musk,

Closed eyelid a kaleidoscope veil cracking.

Juice stains fur tapestry, unzipping.

Hunted testament, fur tacked high,

Taxidermy desecrates decay’s appetite.

I am the insatiable heretic.

Morning brings pollen-pulse stain, searing.

You will know when there is no other way.

I slip into purple martin’s skin,

Oil slick whisper,

Become sky’s weightless shadow.

Beak loosed upon green writhe below,

Bellies break in sour plum honey,

For even worms must feast.

There is always another way into the orchard.

Alyssa Blankenship

Alyssa Blankenship is a working artist. Previously unpublished, Alyssa creates works that center around heavy themes expressed through the lens of the natural world.

Anniversary Dinner

April 2025 | poetry

Because sweetheart, this life
is a born escape artist,
a migrating fever,
a convict tattooed in invisible ink,
without mercy or nostalgia. – Tony Hoagland

Dear, you tell me you hope

for another 25 years together.

You, who used to skew toward ballerina-looking

lawyers with nary a hair nor argument astray.

You, the noisy admirer of stoicism

waving toward my shoes in admonishment

about the impracticality of carpeting

the world, you wrapped in a blanket

of hermeneutic suspicion, who nonetheless

equates any minor flaw with loss of full humanity−

you tell me I should just shoot you if

you ever 1) limp or 2) go mildly deaf−

you and your paradoxes are infinite:

confusing, amusing as kittens.

Because, let me tell you, such flaws

will grow, will overpopulate like tribbles,

like haystacks of books

and grain siloes of clothes:

a humiliation of abundance,

the digging out of which

could well result in the burial

of the digger. Meanwhile,

the losses peck away their

own claims until it is hard

to recognize−like something moldy

overlooked in the refrigerator−what’s left.

I told you when we met how I hated

the pressure of the term          soulmate,

and capitalistic compulsions of Valentine

or Sweetest Days, let alone the big white dress,

like a coconut cake impersonating a woman

or a Christmas tree flocked with chemical toxins.

Because I never expect a lack of trouble;

tennis-hop to be ready for disaster, I request

you wear a helmet in the car, to prevent

head trauma, prompting your eyeroll.

I told Kathy, when she asked

if we’d ever make things

permanent, that permanence,

like perfection, is 1) not a thing

and 2) if it were, we’d only

notice once it was not,

say if I choked on a chunk

of delicious crusty bread

at Osteria Via Stato and

our union and myself alike

pronounced impermanent in retrospect.

But at least she died doing what she loved

with the one she loved.

Julie Benesh

Julie Benesh is the author of the poetry collection Initial Conditions and the poetry chapbook About Time. Her work has been published in Tin House, Another Chicago Magazine, Florida Review, and many other places. She earned an MFA from Warren Wilson College and received an Illinois Arts Council Grant. She lives in Chicago and holds a PhD in human and organizational systems.

Luck with an F

January 2025 | poetry

When my children ask me who won

the world, fear grabs all 78 places

American women used to think of as

autonomous. Here in Spain, the news

corners me from 5000 miles away,

its claws sharp but intangible—

a lucky escape, friends say. Luck,

that four-letter misnomer, swaggering

as if clad in tuxedo and bow tie.

Charlatan in a gentleman´s getup,

raping my tongue for days.

What is luck if not unpredictable?

I can´t tell them which natural

disaster he has up his cuffs next.

The number of people who will suffer

or die as he rattles our planet, lunging

for loose change. How many countries´

pendulums have swung perilously

to the right, even ours? The chain

dolls my children made for Halloween

break my gaze, like a bullet through

an eye—if I sketched an oppressor´s face

on each one, they´d stretch the length

of our home, all frown line and sneer,

creepier than ghosts and goblins.

Is anything bad going to happen?

they ask. I say, L and F aren´t so

different, with their rigid right angles.

Their fiery exclamation.

Julie Weiss

Julie Weiss (she/her) is the author of The Places We Empty, her debut collection published by Kelsay Books, and two chapbooks, The Jolt and Breath Ablaze: Twenty-One Love Poems in Homage to Adrienne Rich, Volumes I and II, published by Bottlecap Press. Her second collection, Rooming with Elephants, is forthcoming in 2025 with Kelsay Books. “Poem Written in the Eight Seconds I Lost Sight of My Children” was selected as a 2023 finalist for Best of the Net. She won Sheila-Na-Gig´s editor´s choice award for “Cumbre Vieja,” was named a finalist for the 2022 Saguaro Prize, and was shortlisted for Kissing Dynamite´s 2021 Microchap Series. Her work appears in Chesnut Review, ONE ART, Rust + Moth, Sky Island Journal, and others. Originally from California, she lives with her wife and children in Spain. You can find her at https://www.julieweisspoet.com/.