Jewel Oreskovich is a Classicist, heritage researcher, and poet whose work explores representations of the posthuman in classical texts and their receptions. She holds an MPhil in Classics and Ancient History from the University of Western Australia and a Master’s degree in Cultural Heritage and Museum Studies from Deakin University. She was awarded first place in the 2024 Armidale Writers’ Award for Short Fiction for A Hunger of Bellas and was named the 2026 Deakin Emerging Scholar in Cultural Heritage and Museum Studies. Her poetry has appeared in Limina, Eavesdrop, and Westerly.
Just Another Prepubescent Helen
When I was a child my father would tell me
// Men would go to war over a woman like you //
A woman?
I had barely tasted that glistening pool of hunger;
Palms slick;; with the innocence of youth
Missing that /innocent/ blood/
Which otherwise
spills like a bright red pennant;;
I/ am/ to/ be/ consumed/
My father knew even then that these men
would kill; to pry open a womb that had never
before been a noose To pluck of an underripe fruit
and tame it’s swell/ He was right; you know
When a man first inserted/ himself into me
it felt like a ;phalanx;
Thick with hoplites in
a throb of rage
I missed a woman’s fingers///
The first fingers of the wind across
a calfling’s face when he becomes; /Blood again/
Or the rosy fingered dawn which
expels its rays as the sun sawn in ha/lf
And bathes
its children in that freshly fucked glow;;
My father would tell me to know my worth
to know
my own//er her;;;
So why has ;sputum become my embalming fluid
What does it
mean to yearn for A tacky golden yoke between my
legs That itches and bridles the pious and; girthy and;
putrid pretenders to a throne /un/possess/able
I am a tapestry
or a wheat field or a wool knitted seedling
to be sewn;; and sown/ and
strewn Around by unrepentant hands
On lands where I cannot
speak but must ;;fuck Men would go to
war over a/wo/man like you
My father would tuck my curl;
behind my ear and tickle me until I
struck him;;; Leaving me alone in
the bedroom pre/fertile/ and p/anting and un//tucked