Poetry

I imagine my true tongue ignitinghis fist—see my future prophecy losing its grip, swinging to make blue-blackmy eye, but I won’t die. I call my sister, rehearsing what she’ll say: Run away.Come home. I’m nearer than the road suggests. I feel my chest heave a century of women leaving scared & singing with straight spine …

I am sitting on the futon wondering when I will earn my parentsa house. A poet in Vietnamese is nhà thơ, thus, the body is a housefor the poem. I want to contain more than one. Maybethis is too much to ask because my parents never got the chanceto learn more than what they already …

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 …

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 …

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 …

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 …

This city unstrings its fingerbones, unravels the dressI hide behind; doorsfixed shut, eyes on every clock blind. Solitaire cards played in the dark This is no game; I’ve seen it all before. picking petals off daisiesdrawn on my skin by his desire.The river’s polluted, the lake fire, my rowboatrotten wood. I’ve seenstrange things Lady, I’m …