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.
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 Previously unpublished, Alyssa creates works that center around heavy themes expressed through the lens of the natural world.
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.
