This selection, chosen by guest editor nat raum, is from A Few Mythic Paths by Mari Ness (Porkbelly Press, 2024).

DAPHNE II

Did she later hate
the soil that trapped her roots,
the rain that drenched her with every storm?
The way men
stripped her of her leaves for crowns,
to celebrate their triumphs?
The knowledge that she would never see
another city, another sea,
race another race?
                             Or did she rejoice —
to know herself no longer bound
as virgin, mother, whore, or shrew
or crone wandering the earth?
To know
herself free from pursuit
free to listen to the wind?
To sleep when she wished,
sing when the wind rushed
through her leaves? To know
herself unbound to former tasks? To know
herself. To be herself:
god-defier, who stretched limbs into the sun
and tracked the dancing stars?

Mari Ness lives in central Florida, and has sometimes been spotted talking to live oak trees. Other work appears in multiple zines and anthologies, including Reactor, Clarkesworld, Uncanny, LIghtspeed, Nightmare, Nature Futures, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Baffling, Strange Horizons and Haven Spec. Mari has also been a finalist for the Hugo and Canopus Awards, and won the 2021 Outwrite Fiction Award.

nat raum (b. 1996) is a queer disabled artist, writer, and editor based on unceded Piscataway and Susquehannock land in Baltimore. They hold an MFA from the University of Baltimore and a BFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art. Past and upcoming publishers of their work include Poet Lore, beestung, Baltimore Beat, Split Lip Magazine, BRUISER, and others. Find them online at natraum.com.

This selection, chosen by guest editor nat raum, is from Moon as Salted Lemon by Clayre Benzadón (Driftwood Press, 2025).

How to Complete a Meal / How to Make Myself Full (Whole)

Home-
made dinners every
night. The china

plates have been scraped
from so much use.
The dishwasher handle:

broken. My flank-rib-
striptease heart. The left-
overs, over-

flowing in the fridge,
I stuff myself (make
myself whole).

It’s the way I complete
myself with lies. I’m full
of shit. Recovery:

a fabrication (I swear, I would
have preferred drugs to food).

Every day elapses,
the facility’s window
a hidden sun visiting

my (vegetative) vegetable
body, a world-class
retreat.

*

Morning munch.
Lunch. After-
noon snack.

Dinner.
Timed.
Hunger

cues, judge-
ment, I meant
binge,

restrict,
it’s not to my
taste preference(s),

(I loved getting
to suck the flavor
out of my partner,

even if it drained
me to my ribbed-
hollow core:

please, people, I love people /
please! at least now I have
material for a hell-

healthful poem).

*

Fuck cyan-eggshell
Miami balconies. I’m as
livid as swaying palm trees

that end up staying
in one place for rest

of their survival.

Complete / (meals) /
failure to launch;
*gourmet plated*,

made whole, with
love: I’m sorry
for spilling

mess.

*

The chaos
was my own
making:

haphazardly throwing
food, rushing to sprinkle
refrigerated shreds

of chicken onto plate,
leaving the counter sloppy
with poultry-putrid confetti,

every day a celebration
at the dinner table
while I hopelessly

eye my parents,
then direct gaze
towards my plate:

(DAD: That’s all
you’re going to
eat? Gobble it up,

you’re skeletal, as thin
as a Holocaust survivor).
I was made

to believe
I’d been formed whole
and full and raven-

ous from food.
That was before.
I kept convincing myself

of a (false) narrative
of who I was, much
better version of a whole

rabbit, raw and boney,
displayed shamelessly,
without any more

dignity, or life left,
pink blob of creature
curled up on a tray.

*

The only after I could see
for miles was stained and
tainted flamingo pink, I was

lower on the food chain
than shrimp, filthy and

bottom-feeder-dependent
in behavior, sucking
up all selfless, sacred,

and satisfying spirits,
taking advantage
of my family’s repetitive

dedication to cooking,
cleaning, feeding
(after) me, only for me

to throw away / clear
the sustenance off
of my path. This path

is a past, my last meal
(the Last Supper) will
only exist,

only emerge
when it ends

up leaving
me (whole).

Clayre Benzadón (she / they) is a queer (bi /pan) Sephardic-Ashkenazi poet, educator, and activist. Her chapbook, “Liminal Zenith”, was published by SurVision Books in 2019. Her manuscript “Moon as Salted Lemon” was recently named an honorable mention for Miami Book Fair’s 2025 Emerging Writer’s Fellowship. She has been published in places including Jet Fuel Review, Libre, and SWWIM.

nat raum (b. 1996) is a queer disabled artist, writer, and editor based on unceded Piscataway and Susquehannock land in Baltimore. They hold an MFA from the University of Baltimore and a BFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art. Past and upcoming publishers of their work include Poet Lore, beestung, Baltimore Beat, Split Lip Magazine, BRUISER, and others. Find them online at natraum.com.

This selection, chosen by guest editor nat raum, is from Moon as Salted Lemon by Clayre Benzadón (Driftwood Press, 2025).

The Opposite of Limelight

Who cares about that lime-
glimmer, all ragged and exclamatory?

Its spark can turn slanted,
invert as lemonlucent lantern instead.

Theme song: Led Zeppelin’s “The Lemon
Song”. I take them out from the box,

those little rolled-up Meyer matches,
turn the lemonheads upside-down,

like my own metal head
heavy to the drum-bass thrash—

till the juice runs down

and my hands run lighter
now, consist of match(ing)
fingers.

Limes of light
line my tip,

not burnt out, but

stale flames which combust
after I pick a guitar

numb to the neck-fret,
“Fingers On Fire”

(Arthur [“Guitar Boogie”] Smith)
next, dimmed in the background,

not loud or as literal as musician
Davidlap’s lapdance with his

lapping fireshow, twirling
incandescence, but more

of a carburizing wring )))
now take it down a little bit )))

With my pinky, I skim
my lemon sheet (cake),

char the sown outwear
of the electrochemical

neon sponge-candy
furniture (then twist

my lips in amusement,
to discover that my hands

have turned into Lemonheads™!)

The limelight
attempts to exhume free

radicals,

those molecular fragments
with a short lifetime.

Now I backmask the song
(reversal play):

a lime can turn
yellow when over-

ripe, and lemons
greens when underripe.

The key lime
ingredient is this (sublime):

(I should have quit you, baby)

My lemon self doesn’t want
the limelight; instead my tangy

batteries turn inward, save
the saturated tea for other hot attention.

Clayre Benzadón (she / they) is a queer (bi /pan) Sephardic-Ashkenazi poet, educator, and activist. Her chapbook, “Liminal Zenith”, was published by SurVision Books in 2019. Her manuscript “Moon as Salted Lemon” was recently named an honorable mention for Miami Book Fair’s 2025 Emerging Writer’s Fellowship. She has been published in places including Jet Fuel Review, Libre, and SWWIM.

nat raum (b. 1996) is a queer disabled artist, writer, and editor based on unceded Piscataway and Susquehannock land in Baltimore. They hold an MFA from the University of Baltimore and a BFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art. Past and upcoming publishers of their work include Poet Lore, beestung, Baltimore Beat, Split Lip Magazine, BRUISER, and others. Find them online at natraum.com.

This selection, chosen by guest editor nat raum, is from Moon as Salted Lemon by Clayre Benzadón (Driftwood Press, 2025).

Hungering over / Solidifying into Succade

Back in Florida,
no room for fall.

I’ve learnt to neglect
all indications
of changing

seasons since
college.

The colors
of my mother’s cayenne
sprinkles, dashes

of turmeric powdering
branches of cauliflower

wouldn’t, at any time, be as vivid
as Massachusetts foliage

and I was thankless
enough to look out the window

rather than at my mom
when she served me a plate,

and to mash the florets
until they melted a burnt

rust—Miami felt
like it had decayed,

and so had I,
inside the city—

tiny sizzles
grew louder

from outdoor heat,
from our kitchen—

how I hungered
for autumn, clean
pulps of snow.

Sometimes boundaries
are set to mark seasons.

I was looking for that,
for another space. I hid

my simmer while my mother
heightened stove heat,

pot boiling quicker each
dinner, when she’d dish

me up and I’d twirl the food
on my plate, still gazing

off in starvation, in far-
sickness.

My mom eventually stops
cooking. We both cease
eating. I remain

in my room. She stays
hunched

over her desk.
We thin in distance.

The periphery between
us divides the tiled

hallway from my parent’s
bedroom carpet.

While my mom sleeps,
I slip a letter to her
under her door.

In the lined margin
I scribble: I’m sorry,
mom. I did not mean
to confine us.

I only wanted to
confide in you;
I miss
you.

I’ve already left the house
by the time she wakes.

She sits out on
the lawn bench,

flushed with saffron,
peach, imperceptible threshold—

in the canal underneath
her, the one she studies,
my face appears.

We meet. When I dimple,
it is hers. There’s a silent
simplicity that mirrors.

I tread closer, then settle
down next to her with
a secret clasp of lemon peels.

Even the shell of this fruit
can’t tolerate low
temperatures, but here

they bud,
continuously.

I wrap one around
her hair like a scrunchie,

then scrutinize it
candying in the sun.

Clayre Benzadón (she / they) is a queer (bi /pan) Sephardic-Ashkenazi poet, educator, and activist. Her chapbook, “Liminal Zenith”, was published by SurVision Books in 2019. Her manuscript “Moon as Salted Lemon” was recently named an honorable mention for Miami Book Fair’s 2025 Emerging Writer’s Fellowship. She has been published in places including Jet Fuel Review, Libre, and SWWIM.

nat raum (b. 1996) is a queer disabled artist, writer, and editor based on unceded Piscataway and Susquehannock land in Baltimore. They hold an MFA from the University of Baltimore and a BFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art. Past and upcoming publishers of their work include Poet Lore, beestung, Baltimore Beat, Split Lip Magazine, BRUISER, and others. Find them online at natraum.com.

This selection, chosen by guest editor nat raum, is from Moon as Salted Lemon by Clayre Benzadón (Driftwood Press, 2025).

Qué Guay

I.

In the backyard of Madrid summer,
unpatterned patchwork embeds turf.

My cousins and I are chasing bees
outside their house, whacking

the creatures with tennis rackets.
The fissured organs look sprightly to me.

I think that to gain dominion over
something that can sting me

is righteous. Fuzz and thorax
punctures from its abdomen.

White foam spurts out.
Froth from the pool laps at our feet.

We are above the tile, on top of
a boulder, about to cannonball in.

II.

Enanito! The older brother calls
to his younger one. I laugh. I like

him a little too much. The little one
starts to sing Selena’s “Como la Flor”

in a pleasant pre-pubescent pitch.
Ma-ri-co-co-co, his brother serenades

III.

back to him. Nature feels nimble,
   como manos de madrugada,

organized fissures to suffice
the gore of matching machismo,

of the older one’s word: maricón.
Como maduro, o masticar.

Faggot—It’s a throttled swallow,
marcado adentro del órgano vital, corazón

como una maleta llena de masculinidad,
una máscara sin sentimiento.

The forced pouring, the push into
the water. The boys play-tackle in the pool.

Se enfrentan mientras se bañan en la espuma.
It’s the gayest thing I’ve ever seen.

Clayre Benzadón (she / they) is a queer (bi /pan) Sephardic-Ashkenazi poet, educator, and activist. Her chapbook, “Liminal Zenith”, was published by SurVision Books in 2019. Her manuscript “Moon as Salted Lemon” was recently named an honorable mention for Miami Book Fair’s 2025 Emerging Writer’s Fellowship. She has been published in places including Jet Fuel Review, Libre, and SWWIM.

nat raum (b. 1996) is a queer disabled artist, writer, and editor based on unceded Piscataway and Susquehannock land in Baltimore. They hold an MFA from the University of Baltimore and a BFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art. Past and upcoming publishers of their work include Poet Lore, beestung, Baltimore Beat, Split Lip Magazine, BRUISER, and others. Find them online at natraum.com.

This selection, chosen by guest editor nat raum, is from Moon as Salted Lemon by Clayre Benzadón (Driftwood Press, 2025).

Ser la Leche

Gutpunch as soon as the soap-sour aroma touches the two front
teeth, buoys creamy, full-bodied, at the roof of the mouth,
gurgle-clogs the throat with foam.

O sea, mala leche. Si tomas leche así, del carton, y sabe podrida:
mala suerte, sabes?

As in, I am the milk, like I am the shit, sick, in liquid form—
take me as I am.

Cuando te doy una leche, it’s a gesture towards sweetness, sis,
I’m thinking of the juxtaposition of the phrase “don’t cry over
spilled milk”, and how the tongue is naturally more sensitive
to dulce (de leche) when things are hotter (like me, when I
want to be).

I’m thinking more of the spilling as useful, a tactic, pouring a
glass of it over your head: here, have this milk, drink it, bit(ch) of
milk magic (like Milk Bar®, or the makeup company).

Sometimes, the sourness begins to froth when mom or dad tells
me, “estás de mala leche hoy”, or especially when remember-
ing the taste of the off-white liquid protein substitute they
used to make me gulp down—I’d hold my nose every time I
had to ingest a tablespoon of artificial lemon, a toxic I’d almost
puke back into the amber bottle—

For dad, the most important part of a child’s growth involved
strong bones: his reminder, proteína! sounded like the got milk?
campaign, but to advertise Cola Cao Chocolate Drink Mix in-
stead; worst would have been to have a son who ended up en-
clenque, weak, feeble, lanky…

I lap up what I can get, I guess; see, I am the milk because the body
inhabits what it’s most averse to. Milk is the food of the gods, the
first human diet, yet galactosemia means something else: galactose
+ blood, or the accumulation of galactose in my blood, the inability
to properly metabolize sugar into the galactic—in this way I un-
shapen, travel all the way down to the gut, then eventually collect
in the liver.

Sí, soy la leche. Maybe I’m milking it, but my instincts tell me I’ve
been that lost boy on the milk carton for so long, people finally
know who I am: except I’m not the proud son, I don’t have the
muscle for it. Sometimes it meant I was the schoolkid without a
proper birthday party (I couldn’t have my cake, and I couldn’t eat
it either).

               Women tend to have smaller, thinner bones than men.

I’m trying to metabolize this fact. I’m churning it. No matter what
form the milk surfaces as, maybe all I’m reaching for, wading to-
wards, is to reach kin above the milk skin, to form into nata, a del-
icacy soft to taste, melt-in-the-mouth digestible.

What it really boils down to is this:

more than I try to skim
/ the girl out myself,

more than anything,

                               I’m the (m)ilk
                               / of my mother.

Clayre Benzadón (she / they) is a queer (bi /pan) Sephardic-Ashkenazi poet, educator, and activist. Her chapbook, “Liminal Zenith”, was published by SurVision Books in 2019. Her manuscript “Moon as Salted Lemon” was recently named an honorable mention for Miami Book Fair’s 2025 Emerging Writer’s Fellowship. She has been published in places including Jet Fuel Review, Libre, and SWWIM.

nat raum (b. 1996) is a queer disabled artist, writer, and editor based on unceded Piscataway and Susquehannock land in Baltimore. They hold an MFA from the University of Baltimore and a BFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art. Past and upcoming publishers of their work include Poet Lore, beestung, Baltimore Beat, Split Lip Magazine, BRUISER, and others. Find them online at natraum.com.

This selection, chosen by guest editor nat raum, is from We Had Mansions by Mandy Shunnarah (Diode Editions, 2025).

marriage, as peaches rot on the counter

He’s the one who bought them; had the peaches
delivered from New Century CSA, the organic farm
the next county over. He’s the one who bakes,
coaxing pies & cobblers from Ohio’s fruits.

I’m more for simple pleasures. I eat my peaches raw, no
condiment adornment, not bothering to slice. Teeth
puncturing downy skin, juice trailing down jawline. Chin
working to contain the nectar before it catches my shirt.

Neither of us touches the peaches. I wait for him
to bake, not wanting to spoil his ingredients; he waits
for me to eat, not wanting to rob me of a snack. We
do not speak of the peaches, only watch as they transform

from succulent & squeezable to wrinkled & age-spotted,
rotting before our eyes. When the mottled fruit is too bruised,
too speckled with mold, too sunken as graying orange skin
reaches inward for its pitted core, I take the peaches to the compost.

We should have eaten those, he says. We should have talked
more, should have loved better, should have eaten the peaches
when they were ripe & full & round with possibility,
fresh from the farmer’s truck when we still had the chance.

Yes, my husband. There are many things we should have done.

Mandy Shunnarah (they/them) is an Appalachian and Palestinian-American writer in Columbus, Ohio. Their essays, poetry, and short stories have been published in Electric Literature, The Rumpus, Black Warrior Review, and others. They won the Porter House Review 2024 Editor’s Prize in Poetry and are supported by the Ohio Arts Council, the Greater Columbus Arts Council, and the Sundress Academy for the Arts. Their first book, Midwest Shreds: Skating Through America’s Heartland, was released in 2024 from Belt Publishing, and their second book, a poetry collection titled We Had Mansions, was published by Diode Editions in 2025. Read more at mandyshunnarah.com.

nat raum (b. 1996) is a queer disabled artist, writer, and editor based on unceded Piscataway and Susquehannock land in Baltimore. They hold an MFA from the University of Baltimore and a BFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art. Past and upcoming publishers of their work include Poet Lore, beestung, Baltimore Beat, Split Lip Magazine, BRUISER, and others. Find them online at natraum.com.