Ariadna Maksin
breech birth
how many ribs look how many ribs
how much hunger how much
spit saturated filling smaller shoes
mocking rain down my throat how it fills this earth
spit soaked how we lip to lip and i’ve no more
excuses. this newborn and naked
pride. after, i see someone turn
egg yolk into syrup and think that
was once a duck, or its child, think
how only in death we remember
to love what was not. how
every day someone is reborn watching
the sky swallow itself, the sun’s yolk-iris
peeling around a gutted blue, tongue
a rice paddy a baby pulled out by the legs
and beating and beating and
speaking in synapse, first, last breaths
morse-coded. a life glassing over,
a footstep thawing.
Ariadna (Arina) Maksin is a poet, neurobiology researcher, and the founding editor of Stemlit Review. Awarded first runner-up in Palette Poetry’s 2025-26 Rejected Poetry Prize by judge Mai Der Vang, Arina’s work can be found in Palette Poetry, Scapegoat Review, and Eunoia Review, among others. She is an alumna of the Iowa Young Writers’ Studio and a Lannan Fellow at Georgetown University. Arina splits her life between the West and East Coast, and her time dissecting either diction or brains.
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