We Call Upon the Author to Explain—Elizabeth Delvin

An image with the text: We Call Upon the Author to Explain

This month we had the honor to speak to Brooklyn-based poet and musician Elizabeth Devlin about her poetry collection Milk Spine (Dancing Girl Press & Studio, 2024). Her writing is visceral, rhythmic, sinuous. It’ll prick your palm then crawl inside your ear and get stuck in your head—in a good way! The poems reward multiple reads, and like a great song on a newly discovered playlist, they inspire you to keep hitting play, to keep going back and reveling in the anticipation of that one perfect hook. When everything comes together, the whole thing just clicks! Devlin has that in spades, and it was a treat to get to pick her brain about her process and the intersection of poetry and music.

A cover of a book showing a painting of a woman with brown hair, eyebrows, eyes, and a red lip. The title is "Milk Spine," placed on the lower right side of the book. The author's name, Elizabeth Delvin, is written beneath it.

Ada Wofford: The collection opens with “Milk Fat,” which begins, “For three years, I stopped living, / so I could give life.” This is such a powerful opening. On the one hand, it seems to pit living as something against giving, but one could also see giving as living; that they are two sides of the same coin. Can you speak about how you view the relationship between giving and living and why you chose to open the collection with this observation?

Elizabeth Devlin: “For three years, I stopped living, / so I could give life,” is a reference to the sacrifices one makes when choosing to become a conscientious parent. There is a dissolution of self, and ego, in service of one’s progeny. I agree that giving is an attribute of living; some of the most rewarding things I have done in my life came from positioning myself in a role of service. But what that line specifically refers to is the devotion required of parenthood; there is little freedom, autonomy or sense of self, once one chooses to be a good parent, especially at the beginning. Parenting a newborn is challenging but is also an exhilarating and powerful act of service, selflessness and love.

AW: In “Up/Pick Me,” you work in a call and response pattern that depicts what a woman is or needs versus what she gets, how she is perceived, “I am in need of religion/It must be a sin to look that fine.” The writer Anne Lamott once quoted a friend of hers as saying, “You’re not a body having a spiritual experience, you’re a spirit having a body experience.” On the surface, the poem is about sexism, but that sexism is rooted in the denial of the spirit (or inner self) via seeing the body as an object. Can you speak about this idea of spirit or inner self versus the corporeal, and how poetry might function as a conduit between the two?

ED: Most days, I feel like a moderately evolved ball of nerves, bouncing from one sensation to the next, hiccupping through a series of physiological and chaotic responses to internal and external stimuli. My poetry lives, and finds color and smell, in the awareness of my corporeal self. Whether I am appreciating my body or not; I have never been able to dissever the two. I do not believe I have a “soul,” nor do I subscribe to any religiosity that purports humans possess an essence separate from the body that is exclusive to us or other sentient beings, or the byproduct of being the chosen progeny of an all knowing, omnipresent being god/goddess. I do not believe there is another plane on which people exist after they die, where individuals will be divvied out their punishments or prizes. I believe that this life is it.

So, when you ask me to speak about this idea of spirit or inner self versus the corporeal, and how poetry might function as a conduit between the two, I am at a loss. We are made of stars, and no energy is created or destroyed. Considering this, I could not separate my corporal form from a literal or metaphorical idea of soul. They are interlinked bedfellows. This all said, I do feel there are things we have yet to understand, or define, and I identify these things as metaphysical, and some may consider that an indication of “spirit/soul.” I love the idea of having a soul because it allows me to contemplate fanciful things and exist in the realm of woo.

AW: You write with a lot of rhythm and rhyme (I didn’t realize until I finished the book and read your bio that you are also a musician), “relative to the / rickety-racket, / bury-that-hatchet,” and in another, “but I love you like a sister / or a brother, / from another mother, / with your free, Whitehall condoms, / cell-phone-bling, pawn-that-ring brokers / and the elevated rittle-rattle.” This produces musicality in the poems that I find quite refreshing. Can you speak about these elements and what they mean to you as a poet?

ED: Humor and play are very important to me, in life, and in poetry. I am so pleased that you received these lines in this way; thank you for sharing your reflections. The musicality of the world is undeniable. I hear melodic voices in all things; poetry is just another instrument, or vehicle, through which we may construct songs. Alliteration, onomatopoeia, the flow, verbiage and syntax, and how beats and syllables flow from the mouth when read aloud, this is where the fun lies. Whenever I write, I am always reading out loud, to hear that rhythm and ensure its presence.

AW: To build on this (and if you’ve already answered this, then just ignore), written poetry is inherently a visible medium while music is not. How do you think of poetry as something visual and what can the page accomplish that sound can’t?

ED: Sound is visual to me, in that, it induces literal visual responses, which can cast my sight in shades of color and feeling. I do not have chromesthesia, but sound does change my sight and the way I perceive shape and color, so, in this way, when I hear poetry read aloud, particularly lyrical poetry, the sound does have a visual effect. I put great consideration into how words appear on the page, as well; format and line breaks, and the play that can exist within, allow poetry to have visual impact outside of the sound. Both things are important.

AW: I’m very curious about the title of the collection, it conjures in my mind a spine molded out of curdled milk, seemingly solid but viscous the moment you touch it. Can you speak about your inspiration and why you chose the title Milk Spine?

ED: I love this; “it conjures in my mind a spine molded out of curdled milk” is right on point. Milk Spine was a reference to being a milk producing mammal and how my life was ruled by the hunger of my child’s need to suckle. It’s also a playful way of referring to the spine of a book. The book’s spine and the spine of the body, give structure, definition, support, and much of what is spoken about in this manuscript, is about the corporeal body, organs, spine, blood, fat, so the title was a reference to that, as well. Breastfeeding is such an animalistic, ecstatic and sensual ritual. It bonds mother to child in a parasitic way that is emphatically welcomed by both participants. There are some mutual benefits to breast feeding but, at times, I also felt I was submitting fully to this being I had created. The poem “Letdown” addresses the complexity of this relationship in detail. I have never felt so simultaneously powerful and helpless, as when I was breastfeeding. The mammary imagery does include images of curdling, and I hope that the narrative of a failed relationship is illustrated by that. The milk, and the romantic love, outside of the mother/baby relationship, is sweet and fatty and life giving, until it is not.

AW: The concept of religion and spirituality appear throughout the collection, though sometimes in contradictory ways; in “Flushing Ave,” you write, “if there was still religion / lifting these two boot souls to God, / But there isn’t.” Later in the collection, you have a poem titled, “Church of the Orishas: A mother’s prayers: after Psalm 143:1” in which you write, “OH GODDESS, hear my prayer, / Give ear unto my supplications, / In Thy faithfulness answer me—in Thy righteousness.” I’m going to leave this as broad as I can because I know this is such a complex topic to discuss, but if you’re comfortable, can you talk about what religion and/or spirituality means to you as a poet? And if you’d like to speak about the specific poems I quoted, please do.

ED: I was raised in strict, patriarchal religiosity; it was the source of a great deal of confusion and oppression in my childhood and catharsis in my adult life. Harkening back to your previous question about spirit, while I do not subscribe to a particular faith or religion, and do emphatically believe that what we have in this life is what we get, and nothing more, I do think there are undefined components of our existence which elude us, and so we refer to these things as magic and/or spirituality. Within this abstract understanding of the word spirituality, as a metaphysical human contemplation, I do feel greatly influenced by that which I feel, and believe I am acting within, but for which I do not have a name or defined understanding. It all feels intuitive, as life, and language, and song, and verse, feel intuitive. I enjoy playing with the idea, that, if there is a god, she is woman, and in direct opposition to that which confined me in my upbringing. Since nature, evolution, reproduction and life, feel inherently feminine to me, when giving a voice, description and narrative to an omniscient being, I want her to be female identifying. In “Church of the Orishas: A mother’s prayer,” I chose to juxtapose these narratives. Yemaya is a goddess in, and with whom, I can identify and have faith in. She is relatable and invokes faith in me; utilizing her to relay my personal narrative as a young mother, allows space for womanhood, and a sense of peace and strength, that was not present, or considered, in the religion of my childhood.

AW: In “Letting Go is Hard,” you write, “I’m not a person / but a place, a thing.” Is this echoing the type of objectification discussed in “Up/Pick Me” or is this touching on a different form of dehumanization/alienation? And if so, in what way?

ED: Yes, this is certainly echoing the same type of objectification that we discussed in “Pick Me Up.” When I wrote these poems, I was joyfully and painfully aware of how my physical body both elevated and inhibited my experiences. I appreciate you picking up on this and connecting these contradictions. Many of the poems in MS are struggling with this same contemplation and trying to make sense of the narrator’s personhood and concept of self.

AW: You have such a knack for association that it makes not quoting you at length difficult but there’s a great section in “As Things Developed She Was to Have All Manner of Revelation” that I’d love to ask you about. “Leaning on an enlightened pillar / of debt and obligation, / there is no catharsis / in communism, / or Christ in capitalism, / just a solo communion, / Yeezus and / I AM GOD (DESS).” There is so, so much happening in such a small space. I took it to be an exploration (or fever dream) of spiritual hunger; one goes to higher education (“enlightened pillar”) to expand their horizons, only to be fed a bunch of corporate speak and rubrics, spit into a society that cares only about the material, and with celebrities as the only thing resembling something like a divine figure for us to worship. Can you speak about this poem and is this interpretation anything like what you were going for?

ED: Oh my god, what you wrote here is so on point and beautiful and full of understanding. Thank you so very much for giving my work such generous and insightful consideration. I appreciate you and yes, yes, yes to everything you said; I have nothing to add.

AW: And to follow up, can you speak about your use of association in your poems, making one line suddenly change meaning by its context with the next line and what you enjoy about this close-knit style of writing?

ED: Are you referring to enjambment and the line breaks?

AW: Yes, I am.

ED: I have a close friend, Barbara Schwartz, with whom I have been in a poetry writing group for over eleven years now, and she is the queen of enjambment! She has taught me the power and playfulness of leaning into this poetry mechanism, to keep the reader on their toes! It is part of my poetic playfulness. When the question, the conflict, the contemplation, the meaning, the understanding can change abruptly, from one line to the next, that is exciting!

AW: And lastly, is there anything else you’d like to talk about? Any new projects, albums, collections?

ED: I currently have a full-length MS that I am sending out to publishers. I have also been sitting on a full-length, recorded and mastered, album that I am going to release in the future. My personal life has presented some extreme challenges in the last year that have left my professional life in shambles. So, there are many things cooking but, without trying to sound trite, I really have no idea what the future holds, currently.

Milk Spine is available through Dancing Girl Press & Studio

: A woman with long dark hair poses in front of a painting featuring a stylized portrait of herself with exaggerated features; a lamp is visible in the background.

Elizabeth Devlin is a visual artist, poet, singer and multi-instrumentalist. Her debut poetry chapbook, Milk Spine, was published by Dancing Girl Press in 2025. Her art and poetry have appeared in Cobramilk Issue 2, The Opiate, Bomb Magazine, We the Tender Hearted and elsewhere. Elizabeth is a three time recipient of the Writers Residency, at Firefly Farms, through Sundress Academy, Knoxville, TN. Between 2017-2021, she was the curator and Founding Director of Bessie’s Brooklyn, a private art salon, which hosted numerous art, music, and literary events including: The Highwaymen NYC, pRose By Any Other, The POETrap and Token Folk Acoustic

Devlin has toured internationally for close to two decades. An autoharpist/singer-songwriter with avant-garde-folk sensibilities, she defies traditional song structures, weaving small worlds where magic and fantasies collide. Elizabeth’s third full-length album, Orchid Mantis (2017), received 4.5/5 from Impose Magazine and was the follow-up to the previously released albums: For Whom the Angels Named (2011), Ladybug (2011) and All Are Relative (2009). In Fall 2021, Devlin released her fourth album, Conscientious Objector (What A Mess! Records, FR). Devlin continues to tour and will release her fifth full-length album, My Father’s Country, in 2026. Elizabeth can be found in Brooklyn, living with her large family, loving on a ridiculously hairy dog, gardening and sipping a Thai iced Bubble tea, or, at elizabethdevlinmusic.com.

A black and white photo of Ada from the chest up in a black button-up shirt and a black blazer sitting in front of a curtain with moons and stars.

Ada Wofford (they/them) holds MAs in both English and Library Studies. In addition to working at a rare book shop, they are an associate poetry editor at Sundress Publications, the editor of We Call Upon the Author to Explain, and the non-fiction editor at Stirring: A Literary Collection. Their writing has appeared in The Blue Nib, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, Autostraddle, Capable Magazine, Sundress Reads, and more. Their chapbook, I Remember Learning How to Dive, was published in 2020, part of which earned them a Pushcart Prize nomination.

The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: These Aren’t My Woods Anymore by Soon Jones

This feature, chosen by Guest Editor Merrick Sloane, is from These Aren’t My Woods Anymore by Soon Jones (Poetose Press 2025).

You Cannot Serve God and Mammon

Mammon being the things of this world, the things
that hold you back from God’s will
to become a godly preacher’s wife
and produce many zealous, Christian soldiers.

(a girl you like tries to give you her number
and you run away, terrified
of your own wild animal desire)

You spend three years at the Bible college
in your church’s back lot, striving
for a more perfect understanding, praying
for the strength to resist all temptation.

(you cannot let anyone know
you have been dreaming of your mouth
on another woman’s soft belly)

In Japan you help a missionary family
with their struggling church.
The wife tells you God only called her
to marry a man, and it is enough.

(she never smiles when she laughs,
and her husband confesses on the train to Nagoya
he has never been more depressed)



You see how powerless your God is
in this country where no one gives a fuck about
White American Jesus. The hellfire street
sermons can’t get a rise out of stoic passerby.

(secretly you pray the Buddhists are right
and that you will be reborn
as anything besides a Baptist)

A girl your age comes to church
for the free English lessons
and leans against your shoulder
while playing clips on her flip phone.

(she stops by on her way to the summer festival
while you’re stuck inside folding gospel tracts
just to show you her pink and yellow yukata)

You go back to the States with
a thousand paper cranes she made for you,
her fingers folding hard creases in flower prints,
gold and silver foils, candy wrappers,

(flattening the tiny birds with her palms,
gently pulling their wings with her thumbs
and breathing life into their hollow bodies.)

Soon Jones (they/them) is a Korean-American lesbian poet and writer raised in the rural countryside of the American South. They are a Lambda Literary Fellow with an MFA from Oklahoma State University. Their work has appeared in Sinister Wisdom, Denver Quarterly, Lunch Ticket, Moon City Review, and others, and their debut collection, These Aren’t My Woods Anymore, is out now from Poetose Press. When not writing poems or working on cars, you can find Soon going on long walks through nature or stargazing.

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. Merrick writes so that others may feel radically loved and is deeply committed to helping create a world that liberates us all.


Meet Our New Intern: Ziyi Zhong

A young woman lies on a patterned pillow in dim, soft light. She has straight dark hair with bangs, glossy lips, and is wearing a light floral top while resting one hand near her shoulder.

I once had so many questions about this world. Why do mountains and rivers move? Why do the stars in the sky blink their eyes? Why did my mother weep before me? And in the universe beyond our universe, is there another me? To me, this world was like a giant question mark breaking forth from nothing, filling me with wonder and with dread. I longed to know, to understand, to grasp how exactly I had become myself, and what it was that built the bridge between me and this world. The first answer I found, the first definite exclamation mark within all those question marks, was reading. From Fabre’s Book of Insects I learned about nature; from Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina, about life; and from Eileen Chang’s Little Reunions, I learned how to understand myself. For the child I was, reading was like a prism: the sunlight I couldn’t comprehend, the light that had once stung my eyes, needed only to pass through it to become a rainbow — one I could see without waiting for the rain, a rainbow for me to take apart and to understand. I grew up nourished by reading.

In high school, my questions about the world turned into countless reflections. During those years, I struggled with mental illness, and the world I had spent so long learning to understand collapsed before my eyes in the wake of trauma. It was then that I encountered Lin Yi-han’s Fang Si-Chi’s First Love Paradise. Imitating the book’s protagonist, I found my own way of taking sorrow apart: writing it down. I wrote down the egrets by the lake, the fantasies that came between sleeping and waking, the inspiration that burst up from my reading; I broke myself apart into words, one by one, and gave myself over to words. I am grateful to my high school literature teacher, who, after reading my work, helped submit it to a magazine, where it was published. For me — disheartened as I had become — it was a chance to feel, once again, connected to this cold world.

For university, I moved from Asia to North America, and once again the world refreshed itself before my eyes. One culture shock after another led me to reexamine my identity and my position in the world. But unlike before, I now had words; it was the key to the world that was mine alone. I studied cultural and literary Studies, first at McGill University and then at the University of Alberta, pursuing a great deal of interdisciplinary literary research. During my undergraduate years, I also returned to China for a three-month internship as an editorial assistant. This time, it was no longer literature fishing me out from the long river of life; instead, it was I who went fishing for words in the vast, boundless sea of everyone’s inspiration, and assembling them so that the world could see.

All of these experiences have brought me here, to become an editorial intern at Sundress Publications. I want to see words ever more clearly and to embrace them; to embrace reading and writing, to embrace everyone who, like me or unlike me, has used words to search for a rainbow of their own. I would like to let the keys that different people have forged shine with their own light, so that they might open this world to ever more possibilities. 

Ziyi Zhong (she/her) is a Sundress editorial intern with a BA from McGill University and an MA from the University of Alberta, both in East Asian Studies. With a background spanning Asia and Canada, she is interested in identity, belonging, and the ways literature helps us understand ourselves and one another. For her, reading and writing have long been tools of inquiry and repair, turning difficult experience into meaning, and of connecting with others who are searching, in words, for a light of their own.

Sundress Reads: Review of Sailing Paper Boats & Other Stories

Sundress Reads header in black and white. A sheep wearing glasses is sitting on a stool on the left-hand side. It holds a hot cup of a drink in the left hand and a book in the right.
A cover of a book, showing a photo of a bright red paper boat sailing in blackish floodwaters in the center, with pelting rain and blue lightning strikes coming from the gray sky above. In the background are blurry outlines of green trees. overlaid yellow circles near the top. The title, "Sailing Paper Boats & Other Stories," is written in white on the lower half of the cover. The author's name, Swetha Amit, is written beneath.

Swetha Amit’s short story collection, Sailing Paper Boats & Other Stories (Alien Buddha Press, 2025), is an earnest, poignant collage of stories that explore both the fragility and resilience of human relationships and the natural world in the wake of disaster. Over the course of nine short stories, Amit beautifully captures the fear, loss, longing, and cautious hope one navigates as their notions of home, family, and belonging begin to transform.

Amit grounds readers in the environment of each story through her unvarnished, simple prose and deeply honest tone. Like reading through an old personal diary that you stumbled upon at the thrift store, or a sociologist’s field notes chronicling the lives of the humans they observe, Amit presents the characters as everyday people with their own memories, perspectives, and responses to the changes unfolding around them.

Using a first-person stream-of-consciousness narration, she lays bare the unpleasant and, sometimes, precarious realities of life that happen without warning. She explores issues such as climate-induced displacement, the material and emotional toll of natural disasters on local communities, and the illness and loss of loved ones.

This is brilliantly portrayed in the one-paragraph story, “The Nest”, where the speaker contends with the trauma of losing their house in a forest fire. When the speaker comes across a quail’s nest teeming with new life, they recall: “As the sky turns orange, I feel a pulsating rush of fear in my veins. I look at the tiny home of twigs in front of me. It reminds me of my old home wiped out by the fumes of orange and hues of smoke” (35). For the speaker, even the orange setting sun triggers their memories of the fire and of a home that no longer exists. The shocking abruptness of the flashback, heightened by the contrast between a fragile bird’s nest and a home burned to ashes, illustrates how severely the speaker has been affected by the catastrophe. Amit’s intimate portrayal invites readers to engage with these experiences.

Weather and natural disasters are a constant motif throughout the collection. As I read, I was fascinated by how the climate-related imagery in the stories seemed to reflect the internal landscapes of the characters as they face upheavals in their lives and relationships. See how, in “The Floor Beneath My Feet”, the speaker and her husband grapple with marital tension and infidelity between them when an earthquake hits their home: “The wooden floor beneath us is threatening to crumble at any moment… Our wedding photo, taken four years ago, lies on the floor, surrounded by shards of glass” (16).

Similarly, in “The Wrecked Wharf”, the storm surge crashing through the Capitola Beach wharf mirrors the speaker’s mental state after the sudden passing of his fiancée: “A few days later, a wall of water split the wharf in two….Around that time, you received news about your stage four lung cancer diagnosis. The devastating news shattered my heart and mind” (40). By drawing parallels between the destructive force of natural disasters and the characters’ mental states, Amit emphasizes the emotional weight of coping with relationships that have been permanently altered, allowing the reader to better understand the uncertainty, inner displacement, and other complex feelings that arise during the mourning process. This helps immerse the reader in the narrative, making its most heart-wrenching moments linger beyond the page.

At its core, however, Sailing Paper Boats is a short story collection centered around the theme of resilience. This is most clearly seen in “Sailing Paper Boats”, where the child protagonist, Krishna, and his family are suddenly uprooted from their seaside village due to flooding. As the rising waters submerge his home, instead of falling into despair, he turns to his faith, reminding himself that “Ma always emphasized how true faith in the almighty keeps us afloat” (13). In several stories across the collection, Amit explores how faith and spirituality are powerful resources for overcoming obstacles. Prayer becomes a way for Krishna to maintain his agency and hope, even when confronted with situations beyond his control. Later on, when Krishna’s village is forced to evacuate, he notices that the flimsy paper boat he made is still holding its ground against the flood:

“I took a deep breath. Maybe we’d soon see Pa…. He might find a better job…. The government may give us better homes. Ma and Pa may stop their quarrels. Like the boat, we could also sail smoothly on these rough waters. The storm will eventually subside with time, and sunny days will smile upon us again…” (15)

To Krishna, the miraculously intact paper boat is a symbol of survival. Through these comforting lines and visual imagery of the warm, gentle sun returning in the end, Amit reminds us how we, too, have the strength to recover from catastrophes and drastic life changes.

In Sailing Paper Boats & Other Stories, Amit skillfully turns personal memories of natural disasters into narratives that connect with all readers. I could understand the characters’ unspoken fears and frustrations and see myself in the struggles they encountered, from avoidant arguments with parents, like in “Sands of Time”, to the longing for a time before, when a loved one was still alive, or when life felt more stable, when you were stronger. But much like how nature is resilient, humans are incredibly resilient as well. Reading this collection taught me a valuable lesson: “Paper boats may be fragile, but they sail on”.

A South Asian woman smiling and sitting on a green couch. She has black hair, half lying over her right shoulder and half down her back, and is wearing a wine-red turtleneck. Behind her are two closed window curtains, one light blue and floral print, and the other solid teal.

Tara Rahman (she/her) is a Sundress editorial intern with a BA in English Language and Literature from Smith College and an MSc in Global Development from SOAS, University of London. She is also a recent graduate of the Columbia Publishing Course in Oxford, UK. With a strong interest in culture, identity, and global history, her personal writing often focuses on intersectionality and the untold stories and experiences of marginalized communities.

The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: These Aren’t My Woods Anymore by Soon Jones

This feature, chosen by Guest Editor Merrick Sloane, is from These Aren’t My Woods Anymore by Soon Jones (Poetose Press 2025).

Half/Slice

I’ve tried to tear the Southern twang
from my throat, but
my American tongue is heavy meat

that can no longer fold
around the words
of my mother’s country.

Like Solomon’s babe,
I beg to be claimed.
Neither the East

nor the West
will speak for me:
“Call any land your home

but ours.”

Soon Jones (they/them) is a Korean-American lesbian poet and writer raised in the rural countryside of the American South. They are a Lambda Literary Fellow with an MFA from Oklahoma State University. Their work has appeared in Sinister Wisdom, Denver Quarterly, Lunch Ticket, Moon City Review, and others, and their debut collection, These Aren’t My Woods Anymore, is out now from Poetose Press. When not writing poems or working on cars, you can find Soon going on long walks through nature or stargazing.

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. Merrick writes so that others may feel radically loved and is deeply committed to helping create a world that liberates us all.


The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: These Aren’t My Woods Anymore by Soon Jones

This feature, chosen by Guest Editor Merrick Sloane, is from These Aren’t My Woods Anymore by Soon Jones (Poetose Press 2025).

Kentucky Daydreams

my father first met my mother
down an earthen path
on the edges of songtan
we moved states every few years
after her death, running wherever
he thought he could build
a church and prosper, propelled by
his new wife, white, yes,
with a white son of her own
and the only one who didn’t match
was me

but it’s those brisk kentucky nights i think of
when i tell stories from my childhood,
of hide-and-seek with the neighbor kids
the luminescence of fireflies
smeared across our foreheads,
our cheeks, where i watched
meteor showers alone on the roof
and slept in the hammock outside
when the fighting downstairs
was too loud for dreaming

the fields beside our house were spun
into hay every autumn, and behind us
the deep wood full of caves where I could hide



and be my mother’s child again
imagining that the roots of the cedars
spread all the way to her grave in wawbeek
and that the water from the creeks i waded in
would find their way to the oceans
turn to steam
cradle us both in the clouds
and fall again
on the mountains of korea

Soon Jones (they/them) is a Korean-American lesbian poet and writer raised in the rural countryside of the American South. They are a Lambda Literary Fellow with an MFA from Oklahoma State University. Their work has appeared in Sinister Wisdom, Denver Quarterly, Lunch Ticket, Moon City Review, and others, and their debut collection, These Aren’t My Woods Anymore, is out now from Poetose Press. When not writing poems or working on cars, you can find Soon going on long walks through nature or stargazing.

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. Merrick writes so that others may feel radically loved and is deeply committed to helping create a world that liberates us all.


The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: local remdies by Chiagoziem Jideofor

This feature, chosen by Guest Editor Merrick Sloane, is from local remedies by Chiagoziem Jideofor (Host Publications 2026).

this poem

this poem assumes you’ll live a long life.
this poem assumes you’ll lose babies, sustain a level of detachment, wield a mouth,
       a potent mouth.

this poem assumes you aren’t like others—just here, idling and waiting.
this poem assumes people like you are taken out of the line, quizzed repeatedly.

this poem assumes the thousand beads around your waist are not of prayers, but
       droplets from home, water turning green in a bottle.
this poem assumes your regrets are of never eating enough.

this poem assumes you aren’t in danger.
this poem assumes you have more wisdom than to pick sides.

this poem assumes your loneliness comes from a room, all that burning and pining
this poem assumes you are a believer until you are pushed by stronger hands.

this poem assumes your success is an uptown apartment that barely allows
       twenty steps.

this poem assumes you only need friends who would point you out in a crowd,
none of that disdainful look at your locs, just love and pristine energy.

this poem assumes there are arms hugging the fright out of you.
this poem assumes home is anywhere that lets you keep your name.

Chiagoziem Jideofor (she/her) is Queer and Igbo. Her work has appeared in Poetry, Michigan Quarterly Review, South Carolina Review, berlin lit, The Lincoln Review, Passages North, Commonwealth’s adda, the minnesota review, Shō Poetry Journal, MAYDAY, and elsewhere. She earned an MFA from the University of Alabama and is currently a PhD student at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville.

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. Merrick writes so that others may feel radically loved and is deeply committed to helping create a world that liberates us all.


The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: local remdies by Chiagoziem Jideofor

This feature, chosen by Guest Editor Merrick Sloane, is from local remedies by Chiagoziem Jideofor (Host Publications 2026).

lesser crops

we’ve been told of old walls still standing,
of forms we assumed, as rebels, dreamers

like it’s some sin
waking from dreams, slowly at first, then aching.

in shame, there are things best kept to self,
secrets locked in our bones all these years,

the shape and texture of that on which we’ve fed
—meanings behind our parables of sustenance.

there is a yam crop served only to kings,
tended to with bent knees and rounded hoes,

rocking a ceremonial headgear
and with a hero’s face. yet it ran scarce

at the very point of need, leaving space
for the woman’s crop, like cassava, a thing less revered.

war being one of the world’s great ironies,
instances where quicker math becomes the norm,

like cassava and its long list of frying and mashing and endurance,
—a lesser crop raising the stakes,



stepping up, like a benevolent daughter
salvaging the burnt parts of a blessing,

learning to make what’s scarce wholly palatable,
to create munch from abominable protein.

such daughter, a pride in how she invents and cautions us,
to eat what we eat and not divorce sanity,

breakfast of reveries dipped in fermented sauce,
steamed cassava leaves for dinner,

while the remaining bits are kept for after it’s rained hard steel.
collective pride in how we all watch the sky,

learn when to kiss fully on the lips,
when to cite the hunger at home.

Chiagoziem Jideofor (she/her) is Queer and Igbo. Her work has appeared in Poetry, Michigan Quarterly Review, South Carolina Review, berlin lit, The Lincoln Review, Passages North, Commonwealth’s adda, the minnesota review, Shō Poetry Journal, MAYDAY, and elsewhere. She earned an MFA from the University of Alabama and is currently a PhD student at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville.

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. Merrick writes so that others may feel radically loved and is deeply committed to helping create a world that liberates us all.


The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: local remdies by Chiagoziem Jideofor

This feature, chosen by Guest Editor Merrick Sloane, is from local remedies by Chiagoziem Jideofor (Host Publications 2026).

wild

    there should be a heavy influence of music here, yell out loud when you catch the vibe

i get off the bus with my head high
settled curls on my head mark me as the shit

i threaten my roommates with prank calls
our surreal love stinks up the whole apartment

we laugh over a bowl of rice
daily bread our lord provides in empty calories

i shower and sing with Beethoven
behind, i renege on my claim to not gorge on these exotic things

i am stuck home and dealing
the bastards upstairs are playing cards and yelling gringo at intervals

after a long day, my mouth releases contracted Os
too tired of faking it, i only dive after unsaid words

there are some soiled laundries to do
thousands of expletives for people asking me to speak louder

i rinse and dry my tongue, a nightly routine
a clean tongue communes directly with the heart

i say a frightening prayer and name my hell
she masquerades as a small town swallowing soldiers



i fall asleep only to see my neighbors
in a dream shooting—attacking this peace i can afford

there is no rest here
we’ve come shaped by the hardship at home

when i say beat me and then release me
fear the wild that has found home in me

Chiagoziem Jideofor (she/her) is Queer and Igbo. Her work has appeared in Poetry, Michigan Quarterly Review, South Carolina Review, berlin lit, The Lincoln Review, Passages North, Commonwealth’s adda, the minnesota review, Shō Poetry Journal, MAYDAY, and elsewhere. She earned an MFA from the University of Alabama and is currently a PhD student at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville.

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. Merrick writes so that others may feel radically loved and is deeply committed to helping create a world that liberates us all.


The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: local remdies by Chiagoziem Jideofor

This feature, chosen by Guest Editor Merrick Sloane, is from local remedies by Chiagoziem Jideofor (Host Publications 2026).

the warlike

(i)

mother has always been a bull of a woman. never smiles.
she made friends but wasn’t keen on keeping them.

on evenings, she would sit out on the front porch,
gather her favorite impressions into a pile.

as if to test a sitting brew, the neighbors would pass, offer greetings,
small talk—the hiking price of kerosene, the recent ban on importation.

like she cared to look less busy; swatting at invisible flies, huffing
and puffing like a pressure cooker. she earned her stripes this way.

(ii)

when asked, i say mother carved me,
—a side stool—from her concrete ideas of others,

that i retained the twitch in my left eye,
borrowed scowl it took the others years to notice.

how i became this adept at interpreting burden—
the deadpan ones, the ones with a mind to run you over.

Chiagoziem Jideofor (she/her) is Queer and Igbo. Her work has appeared in Poetry, Michigan Quarterly Review, South Carolina Review, berlin lit, The Lincoln Review, Passages North, Commonwealth’s adda, the minnesota review, Shō Poetry Journal, MAYDAY, and elsewhere. She earned an MFA from the University of Alabama and is currently a PhD student at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville.

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. Merrick writes so that others may feel radically loved and is deeply committed to helping create a world that liberates us all.