by Alex Braslavsky
But do persevere
through the night of sad
and desolate people.
I hold copyright of my doodle.
Biologically, everyone
at conception is female. They
married on the front.
Cinderella has three
hazelnuts. Within each nut,
there is one dress. Here,
clouds have gone to pray,
the cat swallowed
a big ribbon and we’ve created
a feline infirmary, the Godhead
sends her sympathies. What
happened to 7-Up. Or is
it because fish are all
government drones? Just this
one edge of your finger
is going to get cold, cold.
The ice up and leaves, but you
can still see where it formed
around the rock. I bike down
the street, passing a dead rat.
A woman is crowned in snow
on the sidewalk, another
is red-faced I bike by
them both and see a third
woman, believing her,
with her back to me in her dark coat,
with her arms held out
at her sides like my mother would
have held them to be Her
for a second.
Alex Braslavsky is a poet, translator, and scholar. She is a doctoral candidate in the Slavic Department at Harvard University, where she is writing about the connection between aging and artmaking. Her translation of On Centaurs & Other Poems by Zuzanna Ginczanka was shortlisted for the American Literary Translators’ Association First Translation Prize. Her poems appear and are forthcoming in Rhino, Conjunctions, and Colorado Review, among other journals. Her first chapbook, Pinkyard, will be released with Big Table Press in October 2025.
Hyades Magazine 