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

Excerpt from 1. More Sky

[3]

This is told for comfort: we all become something else.
Halfway out it unlocks your blood and tickles the back of
your throat. The veins unfissure, they weld and steam and
temper as you plunge.

Tendrils and scales accumulate in your mouth, feather-
scales with soft strands and static. The osteons buzz in the
hollow under your clavicle: you heave and splutter.

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.