-
This is not a pattern of flowers
Whenever I get migraines
I see geometric shapes,
same way all my hospital gowns
have triangles and squares. -
The Aurora Recurs Now and Then
When I was a child a streetlamp
puddled a blotch of mellow gold
and the aurora borealis -
Inheritance
I wonder if this is how my mother felt…
sitting in the quiet after everyone else
took what they needed and left.
She was just hoping someone
would appreciate her,
would see the way she held everything together
with her own tired hands. -
Whipped Cream Flavored
The sun has since set, the stars have come out to look down, and the darkness of the sky
swallows me. I can see the moon shining outside my kitchen window, bathing the world in blue.
I’m sitting at the table, picking and ripping my skin off my fingers. They’re bleeding. I look at
the fruit bowl, inside it sits a single rotten gala apple. The red and yellow blended skin has faded
to grey and brown, and spots of black cover it. The bruises have turned into caverns, and I can
see the structure of the compromised apple, sunken in. Fruit flies scatter around it, and their
buzzing fades in and out of my ears as they fly around. I smash one onto the table. I wipe off its
guts on my ripped and stained painter’s jeans. -
Where Grief Bends Light
a litany for the in-between—
this is the pause
where breath fractures its own bone,
where words snag—
like kelp on red rocks—
unyielding, wet with salt and silence. -
Elegy for a Jewish Doctor, His Mostly Christian Patients
for Dr. Sheldon Bernarr Korones (1924-2013)
Smaller than most, not yet baptized,
they reached out to him
with tiny fingers as wrinkly as his own,
as if to bless this short
New Yorker-turned-Southerner—
coated white
like a creator—grateful to his aging hands
for saving their little lives. -
After Twilight
2025 Solstice Poetry Award Winner
The night unravels, infinite and deep,
A hush of silence blanketing our sleep.
Stars whisper—distant, cold, and clear,
Each one a memory suspended in air.
-
Bedtime Call
The plains are lonely tonight,
But not the mountains.
The whippoorwill keeps me company
Singing our song back and forth. -
When I Finally Come Up For Air
When I finally come up for air,
I listen to my favorite podcast through a single earbud
as I push the stroller.
I allow caffeine back into my life.
I blow dry my hair.
I skip the morning pump session.
I stop waiting for slivers of freedom to present themselves,
and instead, purposefully carve them out. -
A Memory; A Pillar
There’s a cavern where she stood;
A bombed out crater, irradiated.
If I enter that circumference, I know
I’ll choke on grief, like some personal Chernobyl.
Suffocate on memories as translucent as dead skin,
Small things—small moments—that fill up the lungs,
Cut them up,
Like glass. -
any given sunday
it’s beautiful
the way your hands work
you roll a bouquet-
stemmed paper flowers
a jazz measure
between your card and mirror
‘painter’s fingers’
remembered by old lovers -
The City Of Hidden Faces
The city awakens behind painted masks,
streets alive with voices.
Footsteps tap over quiet secrets,
and no one sees the skin beneath the disguise.
Each mask holds a story,
a hidden life waiting to be noticed. -
The Ninth Floor
For the victims of the fire at the Triangle Shirtwaist Company on March 25, 1911, who in a scant 15 minutes died of asphyxiation, burns, and blunt-force trauma.
They’d locked all the doors—
To make sure there were no thefts.
To make sure no one left their work.
To make sure the union stayed out.
To make sure they made the most money: -
New Normal
The timbre of my snot wanes
And relapses over dragging weeks
Of illness. -
The Interrogation Table
“Come sit down.”
Another interrogation,
at the kitchen table. -
My Voice Will Weigh On You
My voice will weigh on you.
Those were the last words my mother said to me before I left the city.
She didn’t say anything else and she hasn’t spoken to me since.
Not even after my father kept calling to tell me that this dream of acting is insane.
Not even when I got my first TV role. -
A Night
I woke up today when the hands met three,
A sudden waft of sadness took over me,
Though just a small thought, I sat in the dark, -
Carpet
Red carpet under the feet of the executioner
Red carpet
The same color as blood
Flowing, of the
Innocent children -
Across the Liminal Divide
A father, beloved, curled like a fawn
once a safe port in fitful storms of wrath
eyes of a cornflower nimbus sky
and a mind filled with battles long past
I saw his defeat, and now he is gone
lost to the bronze song of history -
The Weight of Water
By: Lindsay Benster
The first thing grief steals is rhythm. The heartbeat stumbles. The pipes hesitate, unsure how to hold silence. Even the rain loses its measure, falling to a song it no longer remembers. They say water is cleansing, and maybe it is. But they forget what it demands. To stand in it. To feel the sting. To keep scrubbing at what will not wash away. Water carries memory. It circles the earth and comes back changed, each pass through sediment leaving remnants, each downpour mixing with pollutants, heavy with everything it’s touched. The same water that once carried ships through violent storms now tepidly trails down my cheek while I whisper I’m fine to no one. Tears are the body’s Morse code, a wet tapping from the inside. Mine spell please, stay, don’t make me learn how to live with this. They burn on their way out. Not metaphor. Salt meeting skin. Grief sterilizing what it ruins.
