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Sophie Drukman-Feldstein is a writer, translator, and editor living in New York City. Their poetry has previously appeared in Contemporary Verse 2.

once, in America, I told a girl white as salt that I used to shake it straight fromits silver can into my mouth, & swallow. she told me to stop lying. but I’m the kindof human who scrapes & pinches the crumbs at the bottom of the bag of hot chips, who licksthumb & pointer …

Some days I am full of hope Others, a single thing could kill me: a weed where I’ve already weeded, twice the clerk muttering Sir uhhh ma’am one wisp of cloud in the clear blue Some days I am full of things Others, a single hope could kill me: that you already did the dishes …

I had a dream where I brought you back to life. No power tools, just grief; gummy bears, my eucharist. I refrained from paraphrasing my sadness and planked on your grave. The clear vowels of my cry, echoing from head-stone to headstone; the illusion of sibling harmony. From that cry, you rose;I told you I …

My friend is picking meat from a bone when she says her marriage has become bland. Calling it a bone doesn’t paint a clear picture. Could be the leg of a deer? A horse? I ask if she wants the number for my therapist. My feelings are what they are, she says. They’re not going …

after some thought I was plucked into existence, from a swirling moving pool of energetic laughter and repeated sinning due for resurrection. yes I sensed there was gnawing and aching. curling yellow nails scraping up shards of marble grass weeds and dandelion fur must have spilled out, a childhood secretunderneath inches of incense ash tucked …

The sagging steel door scrapes across concrete as you and Momma step into Jeff’s Auto Shop. The ever-present gallery of girlie posters are suspended in a haze of cigarette smoke and engine fumes. Women lounge on motorcycles, cars, beaches. Several pose in string bikinis, cradling power tools. None of them are smiling, exactly, and a …

You are tired of what cloys, what heavies your tongue as if to coat your body in whipped oil and vinegar. You are drainedand puckered as a sheet left too many years in salt water, then parched as a plant struggling to keep its rousable nature. You close your eyes and imagine fruit as color …

“Rice Farmer,” 2024 Medium: brown rice, white rice, black rice, farro, yellow lentils, chickpeas, mung beans, and acrylic “Rice Farmer” was featured in What You Bring to the Table at Slip Gallery, curated by Alaina Stocker Artist statement: My piece “Rice Farmer” is part of a series I’m working on called “Rice, Roots, and the …

Winner of the 2024 49th Parallel Award (Poetry) Touch the soft space beneath my clavicle from the port they removed. Or the radiation tattoos. Blurred ink stains on favorite linens. Here the holes burrowed into my liver because I let them take the healthy breast along with the diseased, but what else was I supposed …