Matchsticks
1October 5, 2025 by The Citron Review
by Clayre Benzadón
Stack of hay,
a needle inside of a puzzle.
It’s his, the goblet of our
collarbones match.
He either sleeps in the sun
or dies from it, from
the light, the puzzle,
the match.
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: clayrebenzadon.com.






[…] Poetry opens with Clayre Benzadón’s vivid world-building and sense of urgency in “The World is Ending Without Lemons” and “Matchsticks.” […]