Clayre Benzadón
–inspired by T.S. Eliot’s “The Waste Land”

I dealt a wicked pack
of cards. The Hanged

Man likes letters, breaks
his neck on vowels.

Unreal city, castle card
full of tricks. 

Today’s a Wednesday.
Violet hour, I drank

Empress gin and lined
My eyes with amethyst.

Fist full of glass,
frosty silence fooling

the aisle, inlet
where I dealt

charmed stars,
fragments   garments.

Tonight was a martyr,
I threw The Lovers

into the sea, waited
for the rain to give

them tears, I washed
my hair in the ocean.

Saturday: moonlight,
fantastical violence soaking

night. I deal a wicked
pack of smokes,

and hope they drown,

along with silence

in the mountains.

Clayre Benzadón (she / they) is a queer (bi /pan) Sephardi-Ashkenazi poet, educator, and activist. Her manuscript, Moon as Salted Lemon, was recently named an honorable mention for Miami Book Fair’s 2025 Emerging Writer’s Fellowship and was chosen as a winner for Driftwood Press’s Editor’s Pick Poetry Prize. She has been published in places including Jet Fuel Review, Libre, and SWWIM. Find more about her here: https://www.clayrebenzadon.com.