The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Otherlight by Jill Mceldowney

This feature, chosen by Guest Editor Catherine Garbinsky, is from Otherlight by Jill Mceldowney (YesYes Books 2023).

DREAM TREE

We are playing that child’s game of guess what I’m saying underwater,

a game of who can stay
submerged longest,
             who can listen longest to the voices of the dead.

You say: Give me your watch. I’ll time you. How long can you hold—?

And how precious is time,
how long wine waits to peak,
how long do we have
              before time fills our love with blood?

I look up at you across the swimming pool and I should not be afraid,
              I can see the bottom of the water
and it is safe and blue and clear
but already you are beginning to blur.

Time takes everything.
Wait with me, wait
for fingers of ice to climb you
the last possible moment
             before rising
                            for air or to leave.

But how could I ever
leave you?



Who better
             knows my gravity? Who will love me knowing
the cost of love is love? Who else
loves me blackout
             drunk, out of my mind, vicious

with this rare, never want this night to end,
with this leave your life,
kind of love?

You bring me wine for my hangovers,
you call me back from
blood on the brain
            when I inhale too much water.

Time long stops the heart
This place
            is the place where you leave me.
I can’t tell what you are shouting into the water
            but the question never was what are you trying to say

it is how long will you stay
knowing all that we are promised is loss.
Promise me

when you think of me
            you will think of me

as the river of light
             you would do anything to cross.
Promise me I will see you again
             even though I will never



see you again. We will never repeat—

               not in the same way,
not exactly,
not when more
               than a swimming pool stands between us.

Each time the dream comes after

I will have less.
I will go back
              to before I saw the sky.

I will take you with me
I will take you back

into this water. I will never move from this where,
this water where
              always

I find you.

Jill Mceldowney (she/her) is the author of the full-length collections Alydar (YesYes Books, forthcoming 2026) and Otherlight (YesYes Books 2023), winner of a North American Book Award. She is found and editor of Madhouse Press. She is a recipient of a grant from the Helene Wurlitzer Foundation of New Mexico. Her previously published word can be found in publications such as The Academy of American Poets, Prairie Schooner, Tupelo Quarterly, Frontier, Muzzle, and other notable publications.

Catherine Garbinsky (she/they) is a writer living in Knoxville, Tennessee. They received their MFA in Poetry from the University of Tennessee-Knoxville, where they are now a PhD candidate. Catherine’s poems have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. She has written two chapbooks: All Spells Are Strong Here (Ghost City Press, 2018) and Even Curses End (Animal Heart Press, 2019), and her work has been featured in Yes Poetry, Coffin Bell Journal, Cream City Review, and elsewhere. 


The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Otherlight by Jill Mceldowney

This feature, chosen by Guest Editor Catherine Garbinsky, is from Otherlight by Jill Mceldowney (YesYes Books 2023).

BOUND FOR

Lightning so angry half the lights floated
blacked, flickered, came back

            and I filled my bathtub with water in case of a true outage,
an emergency-emergency. Why were you

at the bottom of those pools that—in the dark—
beware me of blood? I look to the water. I see

you clawing at your own throat,

strangers promising
                     He’s in a better place.

          What better—what life
after this—too late

for naloxone, too late for Heaven,

new earth. I sit here perpetually
              inventing lives more terrifying to live—

as if reality were not enough. I hope you never know
how far, how deep
my grief dragged me—the everydayness



of walking empty
                              grocery stores, parking lots, quiet fluorescents,
the quiet telephone.

I think that I am alive—once,

                                                    you said Lobsters,
you said something with their chromosomes,
you said the only thing time does for them is grow—

I think that I am alive now
because you are not.

If there is a world in which the dead speak, let them
tell me what it’s worth—your name
so difficult to say.  

Jill Mceldowney (she/her) is the author of the full-length collections Alydar (YesYes Books, forthcoming 2026) and Otherlight (YesYes Books 2023), winner of a North American Book Award. She is found and editor of Madhouse Press. She is a recipient of a grant from the Helene Wurlitzer Foundation of New Mexico. Her previously published word can be found in publications such as The Academy of American Poets, Prairie Schooner, Tupelo Quarterly, Frontier, Muzzle, and other notable publications.

Catherine Garbinsky (she/they) is a writer living in Knoxville, Tennessee. They received their MFA in Poetry from the University of Tennessee-Knoxville, where they are now a PhD candidate. Catherine’s poems have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. She has written two chapbooks: All Spells Are Strong Here (Ghost City Press, 2018) and Even Curses End (Animal Heart Press, 2019), and her work has been featured in Yes Poetry, Coffin Bell Journal, Cream City Review, and elsewhere. 


The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Noctuary by C. Rees

This feature, chosen by Guest Editor Catherine Garbinsky, is from Noctuary by C. Rees (Host Publications 2026).

Beside the black poplars

my father ran against his own spectre’d brain   his sadness   his cramped hunger cabinet
kicked the water-logged soccer ball through the acre and back


                        the dead translate our bodies as reeds voice a marsh
          find their way back like fugitive monks from a night we’ve never seen
                        tucked beneath their robes the books they bear are their bodies


          their fingers are long shadows                         their cheeks scuffed as sitting-stones
                        their shoulders torqued like St. Sturgeon suspended from his tree
                                                                            and feet        grandmother’s
                                                                            and feet        worm-worn spars of wood
                                                                            and feet        father’s feet his mother’s tributary
                                                                            the perennial bones
                                                                            unfurl grass through the grass

C. Rees (they/them) is a queer poet and bookseller whose work contends with contamination and complicity, emergent ecologies, hauntings, and porousness. Their first poetry collection, NOCTUARY, will be published by Host Publications in 2026. C. was raised in Pennsylvania and New Jersey, Lenni-Lenape land, and currently lives in Austin, TX, on Comanche, Lipan Apache, Coahuiltecan, Tonkawa, and Jumanos land. They hold an MFA in Poetry from the New Writers Project at UT Austin. They are ideologically and materially committed to a free Palestine.

Catherine Garbinsky (she/they) is a writer living in Knoxville, Tennessee. They received their MFA in Poetry from the University of Tennessee-Knoxville, where they are now a PhD candidate. Catherine’s poems have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. She has written two chapbooks: All Spells Are Strong Here (Ghost City Press, 2018) and Even Curses End (Animal Heart Press, 2019), and her work has been featured in Yes Poetry, Coffin Bell Journal, Cream City Review, and elsewhere. 


Meet Our New Intern: Yuanhao Lin

I started reading seriously in college, but I began telling stories much earlier, in elementary school. Before I knew enough Chinese characters to write stories, I filled my notebooks with drawings of imaginary worlds inspired by the fantasy stories I loved—Harry Potter, The Lord of the Rings, World of Warcraft, and Final Fantasy. I even invited my friends to become characters in those worlds. I have no idea where those notebooks are now, but I still remember the immense joy of inventing stories.

As I grew older, I discovered English as a more adequate language for my storytelling. I dreamed in Chinese before I learned to write. English became the language through which I learned how to shape those dreams into fiction. Its precision, syntactic flexibility, and ability to render subtle shifts in time and perspective opened up new possibilities in my writing. Learning to write in English not only expanded my imagination but also gave me the tools to transform imagination into literature.

I took my first introductory creative writing class during my freshman year at NYU and wrote a series of memoir vignettes. That class was the first time I realized writing could be a lifelong pursuit. Around the same time, I began reading literary fiction. I was captivated by William Faulkner’s nonlinear manipulation of time, drawn into Fyodor Dostoevsky’s morally turbulent world, fascinated by Orhan Pamuk’s intricate labyrinths of memory and identity, and impressed by Alice Munro’s expansive portraits of Ontario. Their works reshaped my understanding of what fiction could do.

These writers encouraged me to ask questions that continue to guide my own work: How do we define ourselves? Where is the boundary between the self and others? How do we navigate the tensions between languages, cultures, and histories in an increasingly interconnected world?

Today, I am committed to writing about the Asian diaspora. Inspired by writers such as Yiyun Li, Kyle Liang, and Shangyang Fang, I explore displacement, belonging, and cultural inheritance through fiction. As an Asian immigrant in the United States, I am still searching for my own place within American society. That ongoing search shapes my writing and motivates my desire to support emerging writers and help bring their voices into the world.

Yuanhao, an East Asian with light skin and shoulder-length blond hair, sits on a gray couch and smiles at the camera. They are wearing silver half-rim glasses, a light yellow pleated top, and black pants. An open book rests on their lap.

Yuanhao Lin is a fiction writer from Beijing, China, and an MFA candidate in Creative Writing at Columbia University. Their work has appeared in Breakwater Review. In 2025, they were shortlisted for the StoryQuarterly Fiction Prize and the Madison Review Chris O’Malley Prize in Fiction. When they’re not writing, they enjoy cooking and playing Mahjong. This summer, they plan to read W. G. Sebald and learn how to make Schweinshaxe.

The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Noctuary by C. Rees

This feature, chosen by Guest Editor Catherine Garbinsky, is from Noctuary by C. Rees (Host Publications 2026).

Repeating the names of the dead the names of the dead

I hear that water keeps sound endlessly, a field ringing with voices.

Your names have been lost down the river we grew beside, the river that killed some of us.



Caught like flood debris against the wingdam.


Taking off down the Delaware toward Trenton, and further on to the sea’s ringing vacancy.


Or, like how light through water frays toward darkness and the riverbed.

All of you down there, current.



I open my lips, and water makes me home.

C. Rees (they/them) is a queer poet and bookseller whose work contends with contamination and complicity, emergent ecologies, hauntings, and porousness. Their first poetry collection, NOCTUARY, will be published by Host Publications in 2026. C. was raised in Pennsylvania and New Jersey, Lenni-Lenape land, and currently lives in Austin, TX, on Comanche, Lipan Apache, Coahuiltecan, Tonkawa, and Jumanos land. They hold an MFA in Poetry from the New Writers Project at UT Austin. They are ideologically and materially committed to a free Palestine.

Catherine Garbinsky (she/they) is a writer living in Knoxville, Tennessee. They received their MFA in Poetry from the University of Tennessee-Knoxville, where they are now a PhD candidate. Catherine’s poems have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. She has written two chapbooks: All Spells Are Strong Here (Ghost City Press, 2018) and Even Curses End (Animal Heart Press, 2019), and her work has been featured in Yes Poetry, Coffin Bell Journal, Cream City Review, and elsewhere. 


The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Noctuary by C. Rees

This feature, chosen by Guest Editor Catherine Garbinsky, is from Noctuary by C. Rees (Host Publications 2026).

River of Lamentation

I grew up swarming for the love of men
who are now mostly old, or dead and naked in dirt.
I find them crawling over old photos, not ghosts,
but hives of caught light.

Faded at 24, Uncle Al in the clutch
of colorized film. He gazes at an open fire.
The river is brackish with summer.

The dead are a kind of grain.
A resident imperfection
                            in life’s material.
In the footage of Reactor 4 Shevchenko shot
three days after the meltdown, radiation opened
its eyes and mouths. It still speaks its life,
and eats the tape. In his photo, my uncle
bears a grain he never did in life.
His eyes distance, his body gone.

Static is the war of the ants,
like the living skull my brother lifted
from the blackberry thicket when we were young.
                                        Ants sutured on it false flesh.
When he threw it back, the thorns raked it naked.
                                        Grains, ants, my grandfather’s eyes,
                         the year before, caught in film, caught before
                         the basement. He died



                                                         in exhaust
                                                                     -ion.
At their funerals I looked for them in the bushes,
but nothing crawled back from dying,
                                                                                   only
                                                                 light.

C. Rees (they/them) is a queer poet and bookseller whose work contends with contamination and complicity, emergent ecologies, hauntings, and porousness. Their first poetry collection, NOCTUARY, will be published by Host Publications in 2026. C. was raised in Pennsylvania and New Jersey, Lenni-Lenape land, and currently lives in Austin, TX, on Comanche, Lipan Apache, Coahuiltecan, Tonkawa, and Jumanos land. They hold an MFA in Poetry from the New Writers Project at UT Austin. They are ideologically and materially committed to a free Palestine.

Catherine Garbinsky (they/she) is a writer living in Knoxville, Tennessee. They received their MFA in Poetry from the University of Tennessee-Knoxville, where they are now a PhD candidate. Catherine’s poems have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. She has written two chapbooks: All Spells Are Strong Here (Ghost City Press, 2018) and Even Curses End (Animal Heart Press, 2019), and her work has been featured in Yes Poetry, Coffin Bell Journal, Cream City Review, and elsewhere. 


Sundress Reads: Review of night myths • • before the body

Sundress Reads
The cover of night myths • • before the body. It is a gray book with a pattern of pressed wildflowers, overcut with gray stripes bearing the title and author's name, abi pollokoff.

Abi Pollokoff’s night myths • • before the body (Red Hen Press, 2025) is a tour de force of inventive language. She constructs an incredibly original poetic landscape via fragmentation, punctuation, dichotomy, and white space—one saturated with feminist critique and riveting social commentary. Pollokoff’s writing is extraordinary and surreal, carrying readers into an intimate meditation around the multiplicities of womanhood.

Like rainfall, the atmosphere of night myths • • before the body is simultaneously staccato and seamless. While reading, I was immediately struck by the innovative creation of compound words that endlessly dot these pages. Within one of the first poems, “wildflower mythology,” words like “stemwrapped,” “soilsoaked,” “goldthreaded,” and “shadowplucked” surprised and delighted me. Although none of these are in the dictionary officially, they felt so deeply accurate, visually-clear, and aesthetically coherent that I would easily vouch for their inclusion. Pollokoff here puts forward her own mythological voice with these words; she establishes her artistic voice and epistemological vision early in the collection to articulate her own becoming. Borrowing from the compound word “wildflower” itself, Pollokoff brilliantly sees patterns already existent in language and generously extends them to other natural phenomena.

Pollokoff’s structure, ordering, and paginal layout are also designed with curiosity, attentiveness, and care. With the eye of an architect and the mind of an artist in communion with her world, she places the sequence “lilies & these eroded” in the center of the book. Pollokoff writes:

weigh the phrase against
its foliage: so much
vastness in the gasping
roots so much in the
gasping tides
•
here & over that way here
& over that way & here &
here & here &.

Her gorgeous language describing lilies on a shoreline brings together earthy diction like foliage and roots and water imagery. The open vowels in “gasping tides” connect to the vastness of nature. The repeated phrases in the second stanza excerpted above mirror immemorial natural cycles. In the notes section, Pollokoff notes her intention to match “the nadir of the speaker’s emotional self-consideration” with “the vertex of the book’s ‘v.’” The foresight to be
mindful of the physical artifact of her book with the speaker’s interiority is nothing short of remarkable. Pollokoff beautifully gives her speaker a chance to refract, reflect, and grow across the second half.

I resonate strongly with “particular reminders when prayers for the body aren’t enough” for its reflection on womanhood, and more generally, living with a body that changes. Pollokoff’s poignant questioning include vivid images to capture philosophical reflection; for example, “it’s not a question of streets or piano keys / it’s not a question to fill veins with tendrils of curved bark” and “is the body swallowed in fabric to hide / or to hold it.” Anyone who has selected particular articles of clothing based on feeling insecure or ashamed of their body will recognize this speaker’s experience. The title also evokes the social norm to express ‘thoughts and prayers’ instead of offer action to help someone in need. Pollokoff’s poem is a reminder full of smaller reminders for those who wish they were a different shape or who are struggling with changes in their body; she conjures fruits, wrists, cityscapes, and muscles to help readers towards self-acceptance by sitting with their beauty.

The poem “to forest is to hide a woman” also touches on the experience of holding self-doubt and self-love. Pollokoff writes:

i swarm. myself to be a. body. to become. a woman i
am. leeching woman lisping & claiming. a name. for
which i do. not ask i do not ask. to woman i do not want.
to quiver i. want. to know what my insides are. i want.
to know what. is a woman.

i want to know how. my insides are i. want to catch the
dripping. light of stained. glass hanging from. rafters. &
drink it into. me. hold it. hold it close to. breezes &. sing
a little. in the light. don’t make light.

Such wants—to be known, to be understood—are universal. Pollokoff’s fragmented syntax makes a stop and go effect, mirroring the thought process of someone holding uncertainty and desire inside them simultaneously. The periods force me to read more slowly, and through that adjustment, I’m able to recognize more multiplicity of meaning from these words. For example, there would be less room for curiosity in the opening of the second stanza excerpted above if it simply read: “i want to know how my insides are. i want to catch the dripping light of stained glass hanging from rafters…” Because of Pollokoff’s deconstructed and then reconstructed sentence structure, phrases like “my insides are i” echo more clearly, loudly. Moments of defamiliarization with phrases like “light of stained” also piqued my curiosity, making me want to read again and again.

Pollokoff’s commitment to sustaining such an inventive, clever, and transformational poetic across the entirety of night myths • • before the body makes this thoughtfully crafted collection a standout in contemporary poetry, and one I will return to many times. Her unique diction and deep care for humanness will reach those looking for both a cerebral and emotional reading experience.

night myths • • before the body is available from Red Hen Press

Image of Livia, a white woman with dark brown hair and hazel eyes, smiling at the camera. She is wearing a blue and white striped shirt, as well as a silver necklace.

Livia Meneghin (she/her) is the author of feathering and Honey in My Hair. She is Cofounder and Managing Editor at Two Cardinals Literary. At Sundress Publications, she serves as Assistant Chapbook Editor. Livia has been awarded recognition from the Academy of American Poets, Breakwater Review, The Room Magazine, the City of Boston, and elsewhere. Since earning her MFA in poetry, she teaches writing and literature at the collegiate level. She is a cancer survivor.

The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Noctuary by C. Rees

This feature, chosen by Guest Editor Catherine Garbinsky, is from Noctuary by C. Rees (Host Publications 2026).

Augury

as the dogwoods told,

                                   a living cousin grew so hungry
                                   he sold his porno magazines and shotgun and collector’s items
                                   his Nintendo and his cheap clothes and still his hunger fumed
                                   he turned on smaller cousins and wolfed them

                 there was fleeing                                 there was chase
                 chaste descriptions of both
                 cousin in the dog in the woods
                 ran so fast its eyes ignited  mad stars in its skull
                 body stretched like grip seeking
                 trees blurred boundaries until
                 there was no difference

a curse courses through this family
for trespass     for living
for no other reason than the rain is pissed
                                          and decides it so

our ravening family’s great-gray-fogbank-miasma sealing us below
                                the driven-under farmer’s field
                                we fall and pool
                                            tease stagnant waters from the water table
                              breed new winged bodies keening for old bloo
our specters never miss a feast         the arras forever torn to reveal



the slaughtered grandfathers spilled like a pot-roast on dirty tiles
the hanged moon
the McMansion’s too-legible portent
foundation licked by housefire
our witness speechless             doused               in carnage            like butter

C. Rees (they/them) is a queer poet and bookseller whose work contends with contamination and complicity, emergent ecologies, hauntings, and porousness. Their first poetry collection, NOCTUARY, will be published by Host Publications in 2026. C. was raised in Pennsylvania and New Jersey, Lenni-Lenape land, and currently lives in Austin, TX, on Comanche, Lipan Apache, Coahuiltecan, Tonkawa, and Jumanos land. They hold an MFA in Poetry from the New Writers Project at UT Austin. They are ideologically and materially committed to a free Palestine.

Catherine Garbinsky (she/they) is a writer living in Knoxville, Tennessee. They received their MFA in Poetry from the University of Tennessee-Knoxville, where they are now a PhD candidate. Catherine’s poems have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. She has written two chapbooks: All Spells Are Strong Here (Ghost City Press, 2018) and Even Curses End (Animal Heart Press, 2019), and her work has been featured in Yes Poetry, Coffin Bell Journal, Cream City Review, and elsewhere. 


The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Noctuary by C. Rees

This feature, chosen by Guest Editor Catherine Garbinsky, is from Noctuary by C. Rees (Host Publications 2026).

The oracle haunts the 24-hour diner

In this vinyl temple, I am the living ox preserving
the heart of a butchered king. I wake sealed lip-to-lip
with my frail reflection on plate glass. Coffee, darker
than the server’s dyed hair, renounces
second-hand headlights off the highway.
I interpret my cream chipped beef, wanting for entrails.
In this heat, it won’t outlast the flies.
The server, batter-white as Bergman’s Death,
kills tea bags, kills crosswords, kills hours.
I utter as I eat, purloin each moment down
my throat like a poached egg. Before dawn,
I abjure home like I abjure the huddled ruins
of complimentary toast. I take one misguided bite, scatter
the remnants for sunrise: crumpled eidolons, stale visions.
Northbound, the 18-wheeler splits my reflection,
and day tumbles out like new-birthed snakes.





                               where    you      are,          I cannot    t e l l

C. Rees (they/them) is a queer poet and bookseller whose work contends with contamination and complicity, emergent ecologies, hauntings, and porousness. Their first poetry collection, NOCTUARY, will be published by Host Publications in 2026. C. was raised in Pennsylvania and New Jersey, Lenni-Lenape land, and currently lives in Austin, TX, on Comanche, Lipan Apache, Coahuiltecan, Tonkawa, and Jumanos land. They hold an MFA in Poetry from the New Writers Project at UT Austin. They are ideologically and materially committed to a free Palestine.

Catherine Garbinsky (she/they) is a writer living in Knoxville, Tennessee. They received their MFA in Poetry from the University of Tennessee-Knoxville, where they are now a PhD candidate. Catherine’s poems have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. She has written two chapbooks: All Spells Are Strong Here (Ghost City Press, 2018) and Even Curses End (Animal Heart Press, 2019), and her work has been featured in Yes Poetry, Coffin Bell Journal, Cream City Review, and elsewhere. 


The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Midwest Shreds: Skating Through America’s Heartland by Mandy Shunnarah

This feature, chosen by Guest Editor Merrick Sloane, is an excerpt from Midwest Shreds by Mandy Shunnarah (Arcadia Publishing 2024).

Detroit, Michigan

SKATER HOUSES

Detroit  is  a   city  made  for  skaters.  It   is  the  home  of   the   RollerCade,
the   oldest  Black-owned   roller  rink  in  the  country,   which   has   been
operated by the same family since 1955. It’s also the home of Detroit-style
skating,   a   synchronized   couples  skate.  It’s  a  city  that  was  made  by   and   for
those who roll. And that’s without even mentioning cars.
    The   city’s     skate   scene   can   be    depicted,   too,     without    harping   on   its
infrastructure.   Much   has     been   written     about     the    Motor   City’s     empty
buildings,    with    laments   for   the   city    often   manifesting    as    poverty   porn
or   like   a   script   for   an   apocalyptic   movie.   Too   many   hipsters   have   gone
with camera   in   hand   in   search   of  beauty  in   the   destruction   in   the   name
of   creating    art   that    so    depersonalizes    the     destruction   from   the  people
whose  lives   are  most   affected   by   it.    But   there   is    much   more   to  Detroit
than    this.   In   terms    of   street   skating,   empty   buildings  and   unmonitored,
unguarded    private   property     are    the   stuff    of   dreams,   and   skaters   here,
like   skaters   anywhere,    make   use   of    what   they   have.  I   myself   was   born
in   a   city   of   broken   concrete,   jagged,   bent   handrails,   unmown   grass,  and
abandoned     factories   whose   tenants    had   moved   overseas,    leaving   behind
husks   of   buildings,   empty  and   wanting.   My   dad  worked  at  a  steel  mill for
thirty-two   years   until   the   day   its   doors   permanently   closed,   and  I  refuse


to  pretend  there’s  a  silver  lining   in   deindustrialization  and  the  poverty  that
comes with it.
    All this is to say, I went to Detroit in search of new stories.
    I    drove   miles   of   winding    roads   past   glittering  lakes   to  arrive   at   Dan
Mancina’s    house.   His   five-month-old    Newfoundland     puppy    greeted    me
with a howl and bounded to a hole he’d exuberantly been digging.
    “Not   much   of    a    seeing-eye dog,”   Dan    joked   as    he   pushed   dirt   back
into the hole and tamped it down.


                                                                 ***

    “I   didn’t   even   skate   at   that   point,”   he   said.  “I was   over  skateboarding.
I   was   over   the   whole  scene.  LA  was  way   different  than  the  Midwest skate
scene,   and  I   wasn’t   really  feeling  it.  It  was  just not what  I thought  it  would
be. It was super cliquey.”
    That,   combined    with   his   deteriorating    vision,   made  him  think  he   was
done   with    skateboarding   for   good.   There   was  a two-year  period where  he
had no drive to skate at all. It was a dark, depressing time.
    There’s    something   about     skating  that’s    almost   encoded   into     skaters’
DNA.  If   you  have  the   inclination   to   skate, you  won’t  be able to  stay   away
from  it.  There’s  an   instinctual  pull   that  won’t  let  you   avoid  the  adrenaline
rush of wheels under your feet for too long.
    “I’m  way   happier   and I’m   a better   person    when   I’m on   my  board,”   he
said.
    When  Dan   picked   up   a    skateboard   again,   he   was     more     determined
than ever. He   started   making   a  series   of   videos   to   challenge   the   public’s
assumptions     about   what   blind   people  are  capable of, and he started filming
himself skateboarding. The videos took off on Instagram.
    “It   was   weird    having   people   call   me   inspirational   at first.   It’s   still   a
little   weird,”   Dan said, chuckling. “I’m   just   a   skater. I don’t   see   myself   as



inspirational,   but   it   feels   good  to   know people enjoy   watching my  skating.
And  the  bonus is  that  people   are   inspired  by  it,  especially   those   who   are
visually   impaired   or  just   found  out  they’re  going   blind.  It’s   cool   to   hear
from them.”
    Dan   is    still   primarily   a   street   skater    and    will   skate    any   accessible
place,  especially  if  there’s  a  good  ledge,  round bar, or   flat   rail.   He    enjoys
going   around   and   finding  new  spots,   though   he   doesn’t   often  find  them
at skate  parks because   accessibility  is  almost   always   left  out  of   the   design
process.
    When   Dan   goes to a skate   park,  he    has  a   process   of  walking  the   park
to   figure   out what   he can   skate.  More  often than not, the obstacles   are  too
small.   Because   Dan   skateboards   with   his white   cane, he has to  be  able  to
locate the obstacle   and get a  sense  of its   height   and   length   before   he   can
skate it.

Mandy Shunnarah (they/them) is an Appalachian-Palestinian writer in Columbus, Ohio. Their work has been published in Electric Literature, The Rumpus, Black Warrior Review, and others. Their first book, Midwest Shreds: Skating Through America’s Heartland, was released in 2024, and their second book, We Had Mansions: Poems, was published by Diode Editions in 2025. The latter is a Finalist for the Ohio Book Award. Read more at mandyshunnarah.com.

Merrick Sloane (they/them) is a neuro-Queer 90’s kid and nonbinary poet, editor, and researcher from Oklahoma. A Best of the Net and AWP Intro Journal Awards Winner, Merrick holds an MFA from UT, Knoxville. Merrick’s work has received support from The DreamYard Project’s Rad(ical) Poetry Consortium and Poet’s House. A 2025 Garden Party Collective Neurodivergence / Intersectionality contest winner, Merrick’s poetry also appears in citizen trans* {project}, ANMLY, Seattle Journal for Social Justice, Fruitslice, Puerto del Sol, and elsewhere. They are Associate Poetry Editor of Doubleback Review and Assistant Editor of Sundress Craft Chaps. Merrick writes so that others may feel radically loved and is deeply committed to helping create a world that liberates us all.