Tag: best dressed

The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Jeannine Hall Gailey’s “Unexplained Fevers”

JHGKitsuneHeadshot

Sleeping Beauty Loves The Needle

No thread in your needle, just the spindling
damselflies dart through cracks in the ceiling.
The bird at the window tells you to drop the gun,
put on your nightgown and drown. This bird holds
a branch of judgment and tells you you’ll be the one
standing with a sword when the stars rain down.
She pressed her face to the pillow. She fell
for the hired gun. She ended up hungry, an angel.
Her two white feet cold as her heart, while
her pages all ran clean. No more time for kindling,
sweetheart, better make that fire sing.

—

This selection comes from Jeannine Hall Gailey’s Unexplained Fevers, available from New Binary Press. Purchase your copy here!

Jeannine Hall Gailey is the Poet Laureate of Redmond, Washington, and the author of Becoming the Villainess (Steel Toe Books, 2006) and She Returns to the Floating World (Kitsune Books, 2011) which was an Eric Hoffer Montaigne Medal finalist in 2012. Her work has been featured on NPR’s The Writer’s Almanac, Verse Daily, and in The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror. Her poems have appeared in journals such as The Iowa Review, American Poetry Review and Prairie Schooner. She volunteers as an editorial consultant for Crab Creek Review and currently teaches part-time at the MFA program at National University. Her personal website is www.webbish6.com.

Darren C. Demaree is the author of three poetry collections, As We Refer to Our Bodies (2013, 8th House), Temporary Champions (2014, Main Street Rag), and Not For Art For Prayer (2015, 8th House). He is the recipient of three Pushcart Prize nominations and a Best of the Net nomination. He is also a founding editor of Ovenbird Poetry and AltOhio. He is currently living in Columbus, Ohio with his wife and children.

The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Jeannine Hall Gailey’s “Unexplained Fevers”

Unexplained-Fevers-300x300

I Like The Quiet: Rapunzel 

Solitude my solace, wrapped around me
like layers of golden hair. Stacks of books
and I can sing as loud as I please all day and night.
In sleep I kick and snore, during the day, delight
in eating nothing but radishes and lime leaf tea.
Who says I need a partner to dance? Here
in this tower I am mistress of all; the reindeer,
the knight’s armor teetering in the corner,
various discarded disguises, crowns,
crumbs and bones. Will you rescue me?
What kingdom will replace my bounty
of leisure, what tether of care and nurture
do you wish to rope my neck with?

—

 

This selection comes from Jeannine Hall Gailey’s Unexplained Fevers, available from New Binary Press. Purchase your copy here!

Jeannine Hall Gailey is the Poet Laureate of Redmond, Washington, and the author of Becoming the Villainess (Steel Toe Books, 2006) and She Returns to the Floating World (Kitsune Books, 2011) which was an Eric Hoffer Montaigne Medal finalist in 2012. Her work has been featured on NPR’s The Writer’s Almanac, Verse Daily, and in The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror. Her poems have appeared in journals such as The Iowa Review, American Poetry Review and Prairie Schooner. She volunteers as an editorial consultant for Crab Creek Review and currently teaches part-time at the MFA program at National University. Her personal website is www.webbish6.com.

Darren C. Demaree is the author of three poetry collections, As We Refer to Our Bodies (2013, 8th House), Temporary Champions (2014, Main Street Rag), and Not For Art For Prayer (2015, 8th House). He is the recipient of three Pushcart Prize nominations and a Best of the Net nomination. He is also a founding editor of Ovenbird Poetry and AltOhio. He is currently living in Columbus, Ohio with his wife and children.

The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Jeannine Hall Gailey’s “Unexplained Fevers”

JHGKitsuneHeadshot

I Like the Quiet: Snow White

The minutes’ silence wraps around me like a stole
and underneath this glass, I contemplate the perfect
vanilla ice, the shapes of faces on ceilings,
mares’ tails in the sky. My eggshell-thin
eyelids take it all in, you might see them flutter,
think I’m faking. But really, if you could get me out
of your looking glass, you could see
the real me; the hermit-crab, the snail inside its opaque shell.
Not a party princess, not ready to embrace
the noisy handsome prince just yet; give me a little
time to myself. I just might dream up a new ending,
a new soul. A sister wise as I am beautiful.
I would give her a sword and riding boots,
talking birds and a sorceress voice. She might even
talk me down from this glass ledge,
this solitude of sleep, might shake me til the apple
drops from my mouth and I finally find my tongue.

—

 

This selection comes from Jeannine Hall Gailey’s Unexplained Fevers, available from New Binary Press. Purchase your copy here!

Jeannine Hall Gailey is the Poet Laureate of Redmond, Washington, and the author of Becoming the Villainess (Steel Toe Books, 2006) and She Returns to the Floating World (Kitsune Books, 2011) which was an Eric Hoffer Montaigne Medal finalist in 2012. Her work has been featured on NPR’s The Writer’s Almanac, Verse Daily, and in The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror. Her poems have appeared in journals such as The Iowa Review, American Poetry Review and Prairie Schooner. She volunteers as an editorial consultant for Crab Creek Review and currently teaches part-time at the MFA program at National University. Her personal website is www.webbish6.com.

Darren C. Demaree is the author of three poetry collections, As We Refer to Our Bodies (2013, 8th House), Temporary Champions (2014, Main Street Rag), and Not For Art For Prayer (2015, 8th House). He is the recipient of three Pushcart Prize nominations and a Best of the Net nomination. He is also a founding editor of Ovenbird Poetry and AltOhio. He is currently living in Columbus, Ohio with his wife and children.

The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Lucy Ives’ “Orange Roses”

Lucy-Ives

Beastgardens

First Garden

Beastgarden.

Second Garden

Bees go mad on late summer evenings, should
People stray from their jobs towards water

Beastgarden.

Third Garden

Who makes the rented red boat’s
Oars turn

Who is the younger one always
Turning up

Who professes to be better because
He is just looking

Who says he is worse off as
He cannot look

Beastgarden.

Fourth Garden

The unicycle girl, thin
Like one with a sexual problem,
Goes through
The Schlosspark. This follows:
Father rolling his eyes

Beastgarden.

Fifth Garden

The man from Manchester
Has my breast in his hand

These are funny
They don’t do anything do they

Being burnt by a fire I say

Beastgarden.

Sixth Garden

Similarly, if only
You grasped some
Titanic misery or a
Love like an old man’s

Beastgarden.

 

Seventh Garden

Where were we

A ballroom competition goes on
A yellow satin bikini
A fuchsia floor-length are
Dancing; an audience is
Drinking, clapping 1 2 3 1 2 3

Beastgarden.

—

This selection comes from Lucy Ives’ book Orange Roses, available from Ahsahta Press. Purchase your copy here!

Lucy Ives was born in New York City in 1980, received an AB, magna cum laude, from Harvard College, an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, and is currently completing a PhD in comparative literature at New York University. She has lived outside the U.S. for extended periods in Hirosaki, Japan, and Paris and has studied French, German, Greek, Japanese, and Latin, among other languages. A deputy editor with Triple Canopy, the arts magazine and publisher, Ives continues to live in New York.

Darren C. Demaree is the author of three poetry collections, As We Refer to Our Bodies (2013, 8th House), Temporary Champions (2014, Main Street Rag), and Not For Art For Prayer (2015, 8th House). He is the recipient of three Pushcart Prize nominations and a Best of the Net nomination. He is also a founding editor of Ovenbird Poetry and AltOhio. He is currently living in Columbus, Ohio with his wife and children.

The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Lucy Ives’ “Orange Roses”

IvesCover-350x466

The Catalogue

1

The body of water a particular time of day resembles         (candida)

Permanence, residence, desire, history, possession        (culture of)

That difference, disproportion
Was written in the stars

                                                                (form of an animal, unnamable
                                                                           ages point to point, how

                                                                                                he rushed to
                                                                                              hunt me with

                                                                                                        a bluff)

Il trompe son monde

2

The man next to me appears

Like an angel enamored of

The apple, to be

In redness, as of love

3

In this black underwear or smiling. Teeth long as a beard
or grinning. That there might be less question of favor

In light of the neck’s miniature hair. On occasion of envy
and admiration. In hopes of return

Respectfully posed for catalogue photos. With apparent concern for
the passerby. Without impatience

That the song continue to their advantage. Palely

4

The way this teacher crowds up over the woman’s shoulder! Ich? She
asks him warmly Ich? The bronze animals twitter, walk on each other’s
shoulders. They were a statue from Bremen, I tell you, a statue!

5

They lay in bed; more honestly, on the floor; most honest, nude on
the carpet under a blanket except for their socks. Behind their heads,
a window, and birds rush up it. A clear day, and this is just after
the flock passes, she asks, “What?” Literally, he has been telling her
about a man he believes practices magic. He is trying to explain what
he will do with his life. “My friend,” he says, “would not even let
me read the book. I tried to pick it up, and he knocked it out of my
hands.” He says, “It’s because he thinks I might be predisposed to do
evil. Nietzsche,” he says, “though, is only talking about bad and good.
There’s a difference between bad and evil.” There is a large silk scarf
stretched across the ceiling. They are on the fifth floor. The authorities
these people report to are different. For example, she says, “You look
like a cat.” For example, he says, “Interesting.” At eleven o’clock they
rise. He moves toward the closet where he removes a small leather
pouch and draws something gold out. “This basically expresses who
my father is,” he says. He has a Mercedes symbol on a chain in his
hand. He does it up around his neck. “I think I am going to wear my
cowboy shirt today,” he says. She goes into the bathroom. Splashing
sounds, faucet and toilet, can be heard. In the meantime, he busies
himself with the cd changer. She comes into the room again in a hurry.
She draws on the long dark coat he admires

6

Our amazing bed is the future. Do nothing but lie down on it. Owners
love the feeling of weightless sleep

7

Our amazing bed is the future. Do nothing but lie down on it. Owners
love the feeling of weightless sleep Miracle on the inside. Our amazing
bed is the future. Do nothing but lie down on it. Owners love the
feeling of weightless sleep. Miracle on the inside. Our amazing bed is
the future. Do nothing but lie down on it. Owners love the feeling of
weightless sleep. Miracle on the inside. Our amazing bed is the future.
Do nothing but lie down on it. Owners love the feeling of weightless
sleep. Miracle on the inside. Our amazing bed is the future. Do nothing
but lie down on it

—

This selection comes from Lucy Ives’ book Orange Roses, available from Ahsahta Press. Purchase your copy here!

Lucy Ives was born in New York City in 1980, received an AB, magna cum laude, from Harvard College, an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, and is currently completing a PhD in comparative literature at New York University. She has lived outside the U.S. for extended periods in Hirosaki, Japan, and Paris and has studied French, German, Greek, Japanese, and Latin, among other languages. A deputy editor with Triple Canopy, the arts magazine and publisher, Ives continues to live in New York.

Darren C. Demaree is the author of three poetry collections, As We Refer to Our Bodies (2013, 8th House), Temporary Champions (2014, Main Street Rag), and Not For Art For Prayer (2015, 8th House). He is the recipient of three Pushcart Prize nominations and a Best of the Net nomination. He is also a founding editor of Ovenbird Poetry and AltOhio. He is currently living in Columbus, Ohio with his wife and children.

The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Lucy Ives’ “Orange Roses”

Lucy-Ives

Early Novel

riding beside the soul in a great
automobile

fences spiral up whatever’s
at heart

a face that doesn’t look like
a horse

but thinks
with spurs

———————————————————-

in estimation of the moment before impact
the weight in it rides out but not on legs

the wheels farthest in back lock
and swinging over ice are

muscle under weight of bone
or limb that whips along an arc

———————————————————

if one follows one’s understanding rather
than resisting: pleasure.

though, not following pleasure:
receiving its press from out

the world as one

———————————————————

enters farther

——————————————————–

in the economy of appearance
for so many hundreds here

to enter yet
control

just now
your partnership

I love you, giving up
love you, passing in

——————————————————–

don’t we just want to climb
back in our bed

sleep, exchange
imperial, the perfect

rose, nothing
no one’s

——————————————————-

he remains, the
greatness is in him

and in leaving, the left
is great

absence of emotion in a room

letting us wait

why wait

——————————————————–

made

and made the flame at least with these
eyes in mind

memory

made night for remembrance

made the intentions that someone wear
them

made water that
it lie in the sink in an adjoining room

passage for carrying

the knot so language would have
mention

of what it later did

—————————————————–

the conversation of one
thousand dreams

occurred
a tent fell

—————————————————

the idea there
is a world

and each person
under that tent, another myself
or the wiser picture
of foreigners walking in a field

if we approach
one thinking

it is a child
we haven’t

————————————————–

walking backwards I said, Tell me
what man is

—

This selection comes from Lucy Ives’ book Orange Roses, available from Ahsahta Press. Purchase your copy here!

Lucy Ives was born in New York City in 1980, received an AB, magna cum laude, from Harvard College, an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, and is currently completing a PhD in comparative literature at New York University. She has lived outside the U.S. for extended periods in Hirosaki, Japan, and Paris and has studied French, German, Greek, Japanese, and Latin, among other languages. A deputy editor with Triple Canopy, the arts magazine and publisher, Ives continues to live in New York.

Darren C. Demaree is the author of three poetry collections, As We Refer to Our Bodies (2013, 8th House), Temporary Champions (2014, Main Street Rag), and Not For Art For Prayer (2015, 8th House). He is the recipient of three Pushcart Prize nominations and a Best of the Net nomination. He is also a founding editor of Ovenbird Poetry and AltOhio. He is currently living in Columbus, Ohio with his wife and children.

The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Lucy Ives’ “Orange Roses”

IvesCover-350x466

European

 

Yellow-red

Roses at a blue gate

Boys brush aside sand

 

Orange roses

White,
Red

—

This selection comes from Lucy Ives’ book Orange Roses, available from Ahsahta Press. Purchase your copy here!

Lucy Ives was born in New York City in 1980, received an AB, magna cum laude, from Harvard College, an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, and is currently completing a PhD in comparative literature at New York University. She has lived outside the U.S. for extended periods in Hirosaki, Japan, and Paris and has studied French, German, Greek, Japanese, and Latin, among other languages. A deputy editor with Triple Canopy, the arts magazine and publisher, Ives continues to live in New York.

Darren C. Demaree is the author of three poetry collections, As We Refer to Our Bodies (2013, 8th House), Temporary Champions (2014, Main Street Rag), and Not For Art For Prayer (2015, 8th House). He is the recipient of three Pushcart Prize nominations and a Best of the Net nomination. He is also a founding editor of Ovenbird Poetry and AltOhio. He is currently living in Columbus, Ohio with his wife and children.

The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Lucy Ives’ “Orange Roses”

Lucy-Ives

Picture

One man’s insanity, smell of
His sweat where he comes
To drink in the shade

The hanging face
Whining, and quiet, every
Few minutes—some hungry
Birds overhead

White heels on his sneakers

 

Like a cat can
See things out of order

 

Most obvious—most difficult
To remember

A young balding man in blue
Airline socks and
Short tie with a photo of
An eagle came into
The church yard holding the
Hands of two women

He said
“Why aren’t we
Singing?

 

the red boxes drawn over
the limestone face of
the boy’s school

the red boxes of tulips

“I thought she wasn’t even
going to be sick that
long,” said a woman
[next to me] into her phone

a short woman in a
blue plastic coat

a pair of shoes with
shells sewn in

 

on sale shirts open like
roses cross the floor

there is a woman
kneeling in a black scarf

sunglasses on tables
cards & kids’ novels

“I hate it when people look
backwards, I’m like
Look up! Look up!

 

A girl with cell phone pressed
To her gray and red face
Cries, “But she already
Went and did it!” Her
Eyes like diamonds, big
And square

The man with white dust on his
Hands in the train flipping
His phone shut and then
Open, and sleeping then

The lean man in a jean
Suit with the words
“PIPE WORKS” printed across
The top

The man next to us

Shaking his head, his
Single diamond earring

“I’ll call you, I still need
To have lunch

2 rubber bracelets
At his wrists
Pale dragon and crosses

A cup of orange drink in his
Left hand; the flag on a string

Clear plastic cone

 

The cup of flame above
The refinery

Red floor of the landfill
By the yard of red and white
Cranes

Violet clouds
White plains

above the cement sides of this
highway are tree tops

the U-HAUL headquarters was once
the town hall

docks and crates break apart

below ads in which two muscular

children hold glass bottles

 

Gray curl of a helicopter

Plastic lamb

Crows

 

“As long as you don’t think
About it like work, what
You’re doing is probably cool

“Fuck it looks like Seattle, like
Vegas, both
Together

Pigeons across

Translucence of a setting lawn

Pretzel broken
Open by someone’s feet

 

“You can’t see so you
Gotta just throw your hands
Up and hold yourself
There

Brown cellophane
Tugged from a
Crushed cassette tape

Red parallel the iron
Track and comes past

Buildings

 

 

 

 

—

This selection comes from Lucy Ives’ book Orange Roses, available from Ahsahta Press. Purchase your copy here!

Lucy Ives was born in New York City in 1980, received an AB, magna cum laude, from Harvard College, an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, and is currently completing a PhD in comparative literature at New York University. She has lived outside the U.S. for extended periods in Hirosaki, Japan, and Paris and has studied French, German, Greek, Japanese, and Latin, among other languages. A deputy editor with Triple Canopy, the arts magazine and publisher, Ives continues to live in New York.

Darren C. Demaree is the author of three poetry collections, As We Refer to Our Bodies (2013, 8th House), Temporary Champions (2014, Main Street Rag), and Not For Art For Prayer (2015, 8th House). He is the recipient of three Pushcart Prize nominations and a Best of the Net nomination. He is also a founding editor of Ovenbird Poetry and AltOhio. He is currently living in Columbus, Ohio with his wife and children.

The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Karen Schubert’s “I Left My Wings On a Chair”

Karen Schubett (224x300)

Wings

I borrowed a nun costume for the first Halloween party. No one spoke
to me. Some party guests began to dip their heads in gin. Others spoke
of Central America. Wait, I said. I am Unitarian. They ate potato chips
and pretended not to hear. The Statue of Liberty in corporate chains
fell in love with the African bridegroom.

The second year I got a small bag of potato chips and a tube of super
glue and went as a woman with a chip on her shoulder. Toward the
end of the night the drunken hostess bit the chip in half. Half a chip
is better than no chip, she said, which I think of every time I see that
shirt in the closet.

I went as a grasshopper the third year. It was a joke. One of my friends
called me Grasshopper, from that TV show. I ran out of time to make
a body. I wore a green jogging suit and wings. The wings were wide
and I walked from room to room, knocking potato chips onto the
floor. Cassandra had spent three hours getting her hair curled. When
Dmitri asked me to dance I left my wings on a chair.

—

This selection comes from Karen Schubert’s chapbook I Left My Wings On A Chair, available from Kent State University Press. Purchase your copy here!

Karen Schubert’s most recent chapbooks are Black Sand Beach (Kattywompus Press, forthcoming) and I Left My Wings on a Chair (Kent State Press, 2014), selected by Kathleen Flenniken for the Wick Poetry Center prize. Her work appears or is forthcoming in PoetsArtists, The Louisville Review, American Literary Review, Best American Poetry Blog, and diode poetry journal. She was a 2013 writer-in-residence at Headlands Center for the Arts and her poem “Autobiography” was selected by Tony Hoagland for the first annual William Dickey Memorial Broadside Contest. She is a founding member of Lit Youngstown, a new literary arts organization in Youngstown, Ohio.

Jennifer Jackson Berry is the author of the chapbooks When I Was a Girl (Sundress Publications) and Nothing But Candy (Liquid Paper Press). Recent poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Booth, The Emerson Review, Harpur Palate, Moon City Review, Stirring, and Whiskey Island, among others. She lives in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Karen Schubert’s “I Left My Wings On a Chair”

Schubert-hr-193x300

The Compost Reader

You are a person of contradiction. Observe the pomegranate, the way
each seed has been extracted. Of course, the presence of pomegranate
denotes patience, passion, self-indulgence. But see how the seeds are
not so much scooped as torn from their rough and broken cavities.
And the dark coffee grounds still in the unbleached filter: obviously
you miss your best friend from fourth grade, the one with lavender
tissues in her shiny purse. Hmmmm, eggshells. Not tucked into each
other like passengers on a train, but scattered far from their mates.
Here, a pile of moth-webbed cornmeal, hot pepper seeds, potato eyes,
beet roots. Quick to anger. And these red-soaked slices of orange,
spiked by cloves? Dinner party. You’re afraid of the dark. Look at the
layers of leaves–they were not raked in fall, but scooped out from
under snow to cover eleven baby roses and the charred skin of a
butternut squash. It’s not so much that you miss your friend and her
rhinestone barrettes, her sisters with J-names. You wanted to be her.

—

This selection comes from Karen Schubert’s chapbook I Left My Wings On A Chair, available from Kent State University Press. Purchase your copy here!

Karen Schubert’s most recent chapbooks are Black Sand Beach (Kattywompus Press, forthcoming) and I Left My Wings on a Chair (Kent State Press, 2014), selected by Kathleen Flenniken for the Wick Poetry Center prize. Her work appears or is forthcoming in PoetsArtists, The Louisville Review, American Literary Review, Best American Poetry Blog, and diode poetry journal. She was a 2013 writer-in-residence at Headlands Center for the Arts and her poem “Autobiography” was selected by Tony Hoagland for the first annual William Dickey Memorial Broadside Contest. She is a founding member of Lit Youngstown, a new literary arts organization in Youngstown, Ohio

Jennifer Jackson Berry is the author of the chapbooks When I Was a Girl (Sundress Publications) and Nothing But Candy (Liquid Paper Press). Recent poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Booth, The Emerson Review, Harpur Palate, Moon City Review, Stirring, and Whiskey Island, among others. She lives in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.