Poetry by Alison Hurwitz

A Review Of Undersight by 2025 Rattle Chapbook Winner Jose Enrique Medina

Alison Hurwitz’s beautiful chapbook "Undersight" is one of the most emotionally intelligent poetry collections I’ve read in awhile. The book explores attention deficit disorder not from the outside looking in, but from within — through the intertwined experiences of both the speaker and her child — and the result is a poet operating at full power: imaginative, restrained, devastatingly precise.

One of my favorite poems in the collection is “In the Butterfly House.” The language is gorgeous without ever feeling ornamental. Hurwitz understands that metaphor is emotional physics. In the poem, the speaker’s child asks:

“How could they enter and

not see the cathedral?”

The butterfly enclosure becomes a sacred space, a place where beauty itself feels holy. Later the butterflies gather to “drink fermented elegies of mango or papaya,” one of those startling phrases that enlarges the emotional world of the poem instantly.

And then there’s this heartbreaking moment:

“Yes, I want to say, this—the way we wait for what may never come.”

What a brutal lesson to quietly carry as a parent watching a child hope to be chosen by beauty.

Or this astonishing tenderness:

“If I brush the edges

of his sadness…”

The restraint there is extraordinary. The speaker understands that even naming disappointment too quickly might collapse hope itself. This is a chapbook full of luminous perception, ache, transformation, and longing. Highly recommend. Available from https://bottlecap.press/products/undeah

Here is the full poem, shared with permission:

In the Butterfly House

From double vestibule, we enter jungle.

Vines bloom their saturated glorias:

Firespike, Lantana, Jatropha Tree,

Pagoda Flower.

My son cannot understand why

other visitors won’t whisper.

How could they enter and

not see the cathedral?

He stands still, his face upturned as butterflies

kaleidoscope and drift through ferns, toward

a plate of decomposing fruit where they settle,

drink fermented elegies of mango or papaya.

If his wish were granted here, he’d be something

they find beautiful, a place they’d want to touch.

He watches a girl lift up her face, a Blue Moon

coming close to skim her hair.

For forty minutes, more, he tries to turn himself

to tree, tries to twine to vine and root.

I will a butterfly to him, but not even one comes near.

His face falls as a field trip jostles, whoops, and calls.

Yes, I want to say, this– the way we wait for what may never come.

I stay silent. If I brush the edges

of his sadness, it might steal his chance at flight. I think

of all the times I’ve tried to breathe myself to branch,

hoping that a poem might alight, might show me

outer wings with eyes of owls until they open, luminous.

I know that ache of being close but never near enough

to catch what flutters in periphery—

the winged shape, the moment:

that trembled resonance of light.

First Published by Rust & Moth