This selection, chosen by guest editor Merrick Sloane, is from Spoil by Alyse Bensel (Stephen F. Austin State University Press, 2024).
Vinegar and Honey
You are insect today,
flighty but easily seduced
with sugar. I drink wine
in bed, empty the litterbox,
anything a pregnant woman
should not do. I lace vinegar
with dish soap to cure all
the sweetness in my kitchen
and ward off fruit flies
drawn to rot. I dress
my unrepentant feast,
my mouth full of honey
that dilutes the spoiled wine
I held too long under my tongue.
Sundays, I am on my knees.
Evenings, I break my fast
with a meal that quiets
my sharp thirst. I scour
the house. I read your letters
empty as shed cicada skins,
a memory of the shiny nymph
that fled for its short ticking life.
Once I make a crown
from those exoskeletons
I know you will mistake
me for one of your own.
You will linger despite
the dangerous cold to cry
your dying tymbal song.
Alyse Bensel is the author of Spoil (SFASU Press, 2024) and Rare Wondrous Things: A Poetic Biography of Maria Sibylla Merian (Green Writers Press, 2020) as well as three chapbooks, including Lies to Tell the Body (Seven Kitchens Press, 2018). Her poems and essays have appeared in Cream City Review, Pleaides, South Dakota Review, and West Branch. Originally born and raised in south-central Pennsylvania, she now lives in the mountains of Western North Carolina, where she is an associate professor of English at Brevard College and director of the Looking Glass Rock Writers’ Conference.
Merrick Sloane (they/them) is a neuro-Queer 90’s kid and nonbinary poet, editor, and researcher from Oklahoma who’s a sucker for expletives and second languages. They hold an MFA in creative writing from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville and are Associate Poetry Editor of Doubleback Review. Merrick’s work has appeared in The Central Dissent: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality, Stories for the Road: Trauma and Internal Communication, BLEACH!, citizen trans* {project}, Arcana Poetry and is forthcoming in Puerto del Sol and ANMLY. Merrick’s poetry was recently selected as a winner of the Garden Party Collective’s contest on Neurodivergence / Intersectionality and as a winner for AWP’s 2025 Intro Journal Awards. Their work has received support from the DreamYard Rad(ical) Poetry Consortium and Sundress Publications. Merrick writes so that others may feel radically loved.
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