SurVision Magazine
An
international online magazine that
publishes Surrealist poetry
in English.
Issue Six
CLAYRE BENZADÓN
Pink Moon
The moon walks.
It's a lamb-dancer,
bleats pink moss
and phlox,
always moves backwards
while walking forwards.
That's the thing:
any step ahead
means going back.
You spend time
painting a piñata,
then pinning it
to a pole, to get
a good hit,
then it swings
in reverse.
Peel it back,
the paper-mâché
ribbon and tinsel,
slit the cow
to let ashes
fall. Good luck
leaves that easily.
Essence of raisin,
wood fire, pine
cone,
keep the moon
moving. This coral
fish egg
tinges pink
with early
beastings.
Wheatfield Treehouse
Wheatfield for miles.
White heat feeds the weeds durably.
The feet that land on the stalks
lead onto the marsh, eat the malt
and the leftovers, held
in between toes, wielding
spikelets like claws.
There is only you
in the grain maze.
Stalk heads split
sideways, hold
themselves like electric
slits. After silence
comes terror.
A life fit for lightning people.
Buckets fill with bearded
cartwheels.
The only lane of desert
in pollen is umber
teddy bear treehouse,
an antique
lace rarity,
bolt of soft
red winter.
Swan Song
All swans in England
belong to the queen.
It makes sense, really.
They mate for life.
Love is a sound.
when Queen Elizabeth
sank her face in swan
meat filled with butter,
topped on a cob salad,
she gobbled it up
with a whistle,
a smile laden
with consumption,
white, wilting.
This is about
consumption,
after all, how
a swan is capable
of eating a pearl,
how the neck
wrings when
Leda is raped
in the pen
of own her body,
her staggering
self.
The queen,
though, likes it,
when her swan-man
nibbles her lobe,
the same way she
licked her lips
on the neck
of grace.
This is about
consumption
after all,
and the nocturnal
silence that welts,
follows.
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, Hobart, QA Poetry, SERIAL Magazine, HerStry, Poetry Breakfast, etc. She was awarded the 2019 Alfred Boas Poetry Prize for her poem "Linguistic Rewilding". Also in 2019, SurVision Books have published her chapbook titled Liminal Zenith.
