Making It
A Poem by Alina Zollfrank
The secret to surviving this year might be immaterial. Suck on hard raspberry candy and stick select needles into voodoo dolls. Beseech the bees to do their thing and harvest wasp-pierced pears in autumn. Lick the juice from anguished lips, spit cores toward yawning sobs. Scratch old scabs that crust again and again. Besing courage while marching, alone or as a swarm, to the blessed ocean’s edge. When you get there–hope-starved, broken-winged–muddied waters recede. Sepia foam spells it out– this orb could do without all people.
Alina Zollfrank (she/her) dreams trilingually in the Pacific Northwest. Her work has been published nationally and internationally and nominated twice for Best of the Net and The Pushcart Prize. She has more coming up in The MacGuffin, Salt Hill, Thimble, Burningword, Reckon Review, and Sunlight Press. Alina is a grateful recipient of the 2024 Washington Artist Trust Grant and committed disability advocate.
