five poems
by Clayre Benzadón
It’s Like This
Death is a caper, a bob, you keep twirling towards it until the blur of it becomes as drenched of flavor and as sweet as the ending ebb. You are inside lemon sauce, swimming in Piccata, no, you are sleeping in the lemon’s mouth, gleaming with dream. Saturated in the last magic.
--
Death is like loving you. Like popping an ollie over fire hydrants, I’m a kid watching how close my leg lands onto it, watching how near me and the exhilaration gets before I break down, tear open, splinter a soggy segment, puncture flotation and marinated capes, those that line the cracked crevices of an iced-over lake. The abyss of you, everywhere.
--
Maybe I’m wrong: perhaps death is the last blue powdery gumball inside the oxidated machine mounted right before the exit of a Toys ‘R Us. (Yes, us. Us as figurines, when we were younger, the store a playground of overwhelming novelty, remember?). You put a coin inside, almost as dirty as the machine itself. Listen to the crank. No one carries them anymore, quarters, and so that gumball is the last sense of normalcy. It rolls down. You cup your hand around the circular portal. Globe it in your hand, then hold the world (me) in your mouth—gobsmack the ball like those jawbreakers you used to buy at Disney; keep licking at it for a whole week, waiting to get to the last color: perhaps it is blue. If our heaven is ever blue.
Boundary Work
That which indicates
the limits of anything:
The limit of power
equals X2. More times
than I can count, a stampede
stepped all over me. And I
let it happen. Once, a man
forced a ring on my finger
before I could say yes.
Another time, a woman
made love to me and left
forever. All I’m saying
is that I am that hanging
two on the X2 continuum
/ conundrum. I drummed
my way towards the top
of god’s palace. His bound-
aries were so robust, He never
ended up letting me pass
through His gates.
Stein’s Plump with Kink; Gaga Goes (Down) Sloe as Gin
Lady Gaga and Gertrude Stein walk into a bar.
No, really. Gin on the rocks for the tender-
buttoned woman. Gaga, on the other hand,
swirls her finger, picks out the olive
from her martini. Belts out:
No sleep. Bar, bus, club, another, club, another club—
(lost generation of restless capital stupor)
Stein stops her midway: The teasing is tender
and trying and thoughtful.
Yes, Stein is teasing her, and of course, absolutely gaga for her.
She pens silly words onto Gaga’s knuckles.
The index: . Wipe
Ring: . Her
Yes, Stein’d like to wipe her down as clean /
straight as her drink.
She whispers into Gaga’s ear: A nice old chain is widening, . it is absent, it is laid by.
Code for “I have to take you home”, as in “I have the whole
place to myself and I’d like to wrap you under my kinky
yokes”.
Gaga, with a muffled smile, buzzes back:
Show me your teeth.
Stein’s mouth salivates with a little piece please: When she grazes her gin-
soaked pearls onto Gaga’s neck, she tastes acid,
red, like plum-apple compote.
Note: Gertrude Stein’s italicized lines / words are taken from “Sugar”, “Study Nature”, and “Tender Buttons [Apple]”; Lady Gaga’s italicized line is taken from her song “Teeth”.
Swordplay
-inspired by Sandra Cisneros’ poem, “Christ You Delight Me”
Christ, I was a Bitcoin-bedroom
cunt to you last night, delighted
in the Excalibur of ay!
Hilt of your sword,
boy, I had to hunker
to resurrect myself
from the mesa of your
body, woolen and
stubble, you kept me
moving my mouth around,
up and down, over the tip
of your dagger, I’d kept swinging
as versatile as a persistent
(penile) pendulum.
90’s Hotmail Core
Hotmail was born the year
I was born. The idea
was to create a simple,
secure, and free email
system. The idea in
my youth: I could have
easily become a full-on
computer geek if I hadn’t stopped
playing Runescape, creating
templates for my aunt’s My-
Space page (I was never allowed
to have my own account).
First it was AIM: My user-
name was Waiting4u2bmine.
It was a shy kid’s way of being
able to communicate
with her classmates. Do you think
I’m stuck up? I asked one of the few
peers who seemed nice to me.
Well, you’re quiet, so sometimes
it can be interpreted that way.
Later on, it was Tumblr, first
as a way to curate aesthetic,
then as a pathway to softcore
porn. X years later, I still have
my Hotmail account, a millennial
hanging on to the last threads
of her 90’s nostalgic core.
Photo of Clayre Benzadón
BIO: Clayre Benzadón (she / they) is a queer (bi /pan) Sephardi-Ashkenazi poet, educator, and activist. Her manuscript, Moon as Salted Lemon has been published by Driftwood Press in 2025. She has been published in places including Jet Fuel Review, Libre, SWWIM, and The Citron Review. Find more about her here: https://www.clayrebenzadon.com.