The Wardrobe's Best Dressed: S.B. Ferguson's "River Rise"

Skylight, Shipwreck

Beneath beams barring
legs, stomach, breasts,

I have grown used

to the moon, its plaited waves
across my face. I wait

for dark, for the sky to split

in spikes of twilight
and the pulsing day

to fade. At night, the tide

of light is tender, slips of stars
washing smooth the buckled

walls and floorboards.

Above, joists groan and give,
like the bruised sides of a ship,

the house rotting

with me in it. I lie in its hold,
tossing, my eyelids oyster shells,

salted closed.

This selection comes from S.B. Ferguson’s chapbook River Rise, available now from Yellow Flag Press. Purchase your copy here!

S.B. Ferguson is a Ph.D. Fellow in Poetry at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. “River Rise” is her first chapbook.

Leslie LaChance edits Mixitini Matrix: A Journal of Creative Collaboration, has curated The Wardrobe for Sundress Publications and written poetry reviews for Stirring: A Literary Collection. Her poems have appeared in literary journals, and her chapbook, How She Got That Way, was published in the quartet volume Mend & Hone by Toadlily Press in 2013. She teaches literature and writing at Volunteer State Community College in Tennessee, and if she is not teaching, writing, or editing, she has probably just gone to make some more espresso.