The Wardrobe's Best Dressed: Lauren Eggert-Crowe's "The Exhibit"

The exhibit is pointing in a direction only you can see. There are arrows on every wall
and the arrows point to hands. It is suggested you consider including the names that have
cut deeper. You don’t. Instead, stand before the mirror as the cotton is tucked and the
light is revealed. Here is the body, its codes. Here is the flat belly parenthesized in the
pelvis. Here are the numbers descending the steps. Some water you ache to drink and the
wrong thing to say, always the wrong thing. The exhibit asks you to make a decision;
each direction waits. The moon grows teeth. On this side is the miniature cathedral with
the spine below the arch, and the molar roof. On this side, the dark room and the eyelet in
the door. On still another side is the cat in the silver jar. This is the exhibit’s pain; you
cannot see every side at once.

This selection comes from Lauren Eggert-Crowe’s chapbook The Exhibit, available from Hyacinth Girl Press. Purchase your copy here!

Lauren Eggert-Crowe is the author of three poetry chapbooks: The Exhibit (Hyacinth Girl Press 2013), In the Songbird Laboratory (Dancing Girl Press 2013) and Rungs, collaboratively written with Margaret Bashaar (Grey Book Press 2015). Her writing has appeared in Sixth Finch, DIAGRAM, The Rumpus, Salon, The Millions, L.A. Review of Books, Interrupture, and Springgun, among others. She has an MFA from the University of Arizona and lives in Los Angeles. Find her at laureneggertcrowe.com or follow her on twitter @laureggertcrowe.

Jennifer Hanks is the author of the forthcoming chapbooks Prophet Fever (Hyacinth Girl Press) and The Unsteady Planet(Instar Books), a collaboration with illustrator Julie Herndon. Her work has appeared in Arcadia, Ghost Ocean Magazine, Muzzle, Menacing Hedge, PANK, and other journals. She writes an ongoing column, Disorder Reigns, for Arcadia‘s online sundries blog. She is an MFA candidate at the University of New Orleans.