This selection, chosen by guest editor john compton, is from Panacea by Alison Strub (Milk and Cake Press 2023).
Address to Andreas Vesalius
I am brittle like the brittle star.
I planted
gladiolas in the rich earth,
and ate a diet of milk.
I describe myself as
I would a mushroom:
orange-red, polished, fragile, milk white,
black where bruised.
Maybe my face was milk white when you told me.
Maybe my face was milk white when I realized.
Maybe I burned the words you wrote on the page.
The white bread and the milk consumed,
pure soft water poured over the soil.
I hold the mushroom upside down, gills pink,
breathe the scent of pears.
Alison Strub is a hybrid poet and visual artist who received her M.F.A. at George Mason University. Her poems have appeared in Gigantic Sequins, Salt Hill, The Seattle Review, Word For/ Word and other fine publications. Her chapbook, Lillian, Fred, was published by BOAAT Press in 2016. Her book, Panacea, was published in 2023 by Milk & Cake Press and her next book, Dust Rites, is forthcoming from Milk & Cake Press in 2026. She can be reached by telegrams and texts.
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