SurVision Magazine
An
international online magazine that
publishes Surrealist poetry
in English.
Issue Thirteen
CLAYRE BENZADÓN
Smashing Squashes
butternut, carnival,
delicata, crookneck,
patty pans all smash –
a squash squelches
from the ochre heel
of heat,
mulch so mushy,
this material must
have shaped
into a gourd too.
Even the vegetable's
inside feels dirty, graphic
enough to cider, sear,
slime, climb onto
touch of seeds, its neck
feels heavy and rigid
enough to grip –
grab the festival
by the horns, listen
to Silverfuck, "Spaced",
"Sweet Sweet", "Appels
+ Oranjes": a squash is as
versatile as a pureed soup,
spaghetti, hell, even winter
salad, all we're asking
of you, squashy little
pumpkin, is for you
to fill us, fulfill us
enough when we stick
our heads into your narrow-
wide patches, give us
Kabocha pie, Large Cheese
heads, mostly what we ask
is for you to sustain us
on our final patchwork
journeys.
I Swear I Saw Ghosts in the Foie Gras
A dog might not laugh like a ghost, but hosts the outfit real well. So when I rubbed under my boy's hind legs, I caught the energy of a guffaw underneath raw foie gras. It's enough to make me roll in the grass, gag like I had leash on (gavage is savage, after all).
I sleep with ghost-chokes stringing my stability into log position. Ha (or huh?). Hum (hmm) didn't work this time, because the ghoul was crawling out of me to leave, to replace the hole in my rug, that grounding, with a hug, I missed it, punctured the gorge even more, so I took my tiny winding-dog from the shelf and yanked the key again, turned the possession slow, cranking – cranky.
Worse were the hands I woke up strangled beneath. They were outfitting me in foie gras, rolling me into a ham-like soppressata, then recanning me, pressing me into the tin, the screech as soft as salaaami. I swear I saw the last of it, the remnant ghost of salty, slurpy umami.
The world is ending without lemons
and damn, these chickens can't lay
eggs anymore, but they still run
like the last zesty citron bomb at Trader
Joe's for the bucket, they escaped the pen,
bombiculanus (bees) up the sleeve,
the world is ending without the mustard
medallion center dramafold, the question
of whose chickens these are, who
laid them first, the neighbor,
or the ducks stuck in the cage too,
how are all the yellow hens escaping?
Chartreuse bloom
lined up along the walls:
I harvest a little chick by hand,
cram the chirrup into a crate,
shellack the top –
I leave the box in front
of the neighbor's back porch –
She won't know
until she opens
the cardboard: I switched out
those bombastic babies'
almost-life, the shell
of their eggs
for lemons.
Clayre Benzadón lives in Florida. She received her MFA from the University of Miami, and is now working as a teacher at Riviera Preparatory School in Miami. Her chapbook, Liminal Zenith was published by SurVision Books in 2019. Her poems appear in ANMLY, Olney Magazine, SurVision, and SWWIM. She was awarded the Alfred Boas Poetry Prize. Her website is www.clayrebenzadon.com.
