The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Erica Mena’s “Featherbone”

Excerpt from 1. More Sky

[2]

Because space must be occupied. Because something hunches
beneath, the crack in, surface tension. Because there’s no space
for another. Remember:
the bonesplit sing, the bloodthrum songing.
You call your own name.

It’s further than you thought.

This selection comes from Erica Mena’s book Featherbone, available now from Ricochet Editions. Purchase your copy here!

Erica Mena is a poet, translator, and book artist. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in PANK, The Kenyon Review, The Iowa Review, Vanitas, Versal, Two Lines, Words Without Borders, Asymptote, and elsewhere. Her translation of the sci-fi graphic novel The Eternonaut will be available from Fantagraphics in 2015. She is the founding editor and publisher of Anomalous Press, and the managing director of the American Literary Translators Association. She holds MFAs in literary translation and poetry from The University of Iowa and Brown University, respectively.

Ben McClendon is a PhD student in creative writing at the University of Tennessee. He previously studied poetry at Northern Arizona University after teaching high school English for several years. His poems have appeared in Indiana Review, Yemassee, Chautauqua, Redivider, Rattle, Word Riot, and elsewhere. Ben lives with his husband in Knoxville.