MYSTIC FOR HIRE

Not everything is for knowing.

I became convinced of ecstatic thought.

I learned of the force of ecstasy.

Passion asceticism indulgence. 

I walked long distances in song.

I have traveled long distances to sing.

By sing I do just mean talking. 

I once walked over a long bridge.

I felt something unknowable ridge inside.

I heard from a long future bride.

I refrained from asking a question.

Instead I sang one long song throngly.

I asked a crowd one million questions.

I wanted to receive two new answers.

I did not need to hold words.

I held water between my two fists.

I asked someone to pick between hands.

I tattooed a mystic on a bicep.

I kissed two people in a strange bed.

I knew what I was doing in an ancient manner.

I knew about the rime of the ancient mariner.

Something very old took hold of me.

I mistook nothing for something.

I mystic’d my way into a bedroom.

I fished my way into experience.

I drank my way to ecstatic deliriousness.

I believed in the ache of a passion.

I believe in the H in ache. 

I imbibed a brilliant wet.

I released it from somewhere unknown. 

I placed my mouth on a bridge of a nose.

A nozzle released a large gush.

I experienced a secret from above.

I placed it on paper like a vassal.

I engaged like a well crafted vessel.

I set sail beneath a long hung bridge.

I was on my way to celebrate a love.

I listened to a very long song.

I was told of an explosive force.

I listened and committed to memory.

The memory etched on my arm.

I endured and I fell and I wept.

I learned something secret through wet.

A tear in the fabric I wore.

I fell off the edge of the bed.

It was possible I’d overindulged.

I leapt from a corner to another corner.

I took off in a car along a bridge.

I sang in the car in my sleep.

I made it to places unknown.

I wrote something down.

I lay on the down.

I placed the etching in a bound object.

I shared it for the sake of ecstatics.

I shared it to document a journey.

I was blooming with something explosive.

I couldn’t keep it close to a breast.

I placed it instead on an arm.

I placed it in ancient cold water.

I ate of a body.

My eyes became tablets.

My arms became fabric.

I swallowed a plume.

I held up an instrument til it left a mark.

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from the Spring 2026 Issue of blush

Read more here

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Juliet Gelfman-Randazzo lives in Philadelphia, where she curates the reading series Spit Poetry. She is the author of the poetry chapbooks "Boring Eclipse" (The Year, forthcoming October 2026) and "DUH" (Bullshit Lit, 2022). Her work appears in The Iowa Review, Joyland, The Offing, Poetry Northwest, and The Cleveland Review of Books, among others. She can be followed @tall.spy on Instagram but she can never be caught.