Lunacy
Clayre Benzadon
Women, ward off delirium
by tying a skull around your belt.
Then remember to place the lunacy
in your hands. Under the gums.
Acrid hallucinations will smile at you,
the braincase a protection against Styx.
Phoebe, shining Titan, fell just
like that without it, from Nyx.
Night is a frantic cavity
where warriors marked star
god Coyolxauhqui mad, cut
off her limbs, tossed her head
into the heavens so that she could
become full again, her face a crescent
painted with bells, and eagles
flying down her hair.
Claws scraped her scalp bare
until her head tore open, her
cranium crowned.
Mother Coatlicue consumed
herself watching this, died from
insatiable insanity.
After, her belly miraculously fell
with a blessing, hummingbird
feathers balled up, violently
jammed, born into her chest,
the same way
month-sickness
collects into umbral
bales, filled with lune,
convex diurnality,
moon sick with the missed
cycle of Venus’ own
hormonal rhythm.
Women, it is not enough
to wish, to crack with demand.
Instead, surrender. Pray to reach
a blue god, maybe Vishnu.
Then settle, with the atmosphere
melting away in fantastic ablation.
Clayre Benzadón is currently a second-year MFA student at the University of Miami and Broadsided Press’s Instagram editor. She has been published by The Acentos Review, SERIAL magazine, Herstry, is forthcoming in Poetry Breakfast, and was recently awarded the 2019 Alfred Boas Poetry Prize for her poem "Linguistic Rewilding".
Find her on Twitter @ClayreBenz, Instagram @clayrebenz, or Facebook
Rough
Becca Erwin
Lesbians are not so soft
as the poets would have you
believe
the first time a lover told me
in all honesty
what I tasted like
I was so upset
I cried as if
they tasted of strawberries
and not
dried seaweed.
One night
you tasted bitter
and I drank you for hours
we fucked all night
pounding and pounding
until blue and hurting
and only stopped
when our wrists were numb
and I thought,
That is resilience.
Becca Erwin is a Jewish non-binary lesbian from Brooklyn, New York. They are an activist, poet, and pastrami connoisseur who works in non-profit development and has a BA in Medieval Studies from Fordham University. They are a co-editor of the forthcoming zine Chili’s No. 1. You can follow them on Twitter @yungtiredd and Instagram @beccaerwin for updates.
firegarden (for frida kahlo)
Mia Wright
Mia Wright is an Oklahoma native, single parent, and seer. Her poems have appeared in This Land, Word Riot, The Girl God, Watershed, and some restaurant napkins. Wright was a finalist for the 2004 Grolier Poetry Prize and earned an MFA in Poetry from Boise State University.
Read more of her work on her blog or find her on Instagram and Twitter.