In full sun, or cold tolerance, asters grown in, all charmed and untoothed, wild— their star-slit petals cross each other, aster- isks, ticks, tisks of remembrance. There is a game blossoms play with each other: besides the speckled throats, plants choose to dress, protect them- selves in fox- glove sleeves, thimbles, during a game of tag, or touch -me-not— a half-life lasts a day. I stare at the aster, at its last finger of pulverized breath. It sheathes, sneezes like a collapsed core of a black hole.
Clayre Benzadón is an MFA graduate student at the University of Miami, managing editor of Sinking City, and Broadsided Press’s Instagram editor. Her chapbook, Liminal Zenith, was published by SurVision Books. She was also awarded the 2019 Alfred Boas Poetry Prize for "Linguistic Rewilding" and published in places including SWWIM Every Day, 14poems, and Crêpe and Penn, as well as forthcoming in ANMLY and Fairy Tale Review. You can find more about her at clayrebenzadon.com.
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