The Wardrobe's Best Dressed: "Motherlover" by Ginger Ko

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“Flora”

You called to tell me “The money’s good—I’m ready to be married!” but
we had already wed years ago.

I am disgusting. Raised to be a bride, to hate myself for it, I come to
you full of brides.

There is no room in my heart for important men who
surround themselves with flowers. Take the garland of wives
and daughters from around your neck. That you feel safe they
would not choke you makes me sick.

Floating flowers. As if you are the bowl in which water rises.
Fucker.

I laughed “You’re silly!” and then ran to the bathroom to give myself
a bloody nose. Surging in pulses

until a rope of saturated snot snakes from my sinuses. Thick cherry
mud patted into gifts and then ossified by sun.

This selection comes from Ginger Ko’s poetry collection Motherlover, available now from Bloof Books. Purchase your copy here.

Ginger Ko is the author of Motherlover (Bloof Books), and the chapbooks Inherit (Bloof Books) and Comorbid (Lark Books). Sidebrow will be publishing her second, currently unnamed full collection of poetry. Ginger is currently a PhD student at the University of Georgia’s creative writing program. You can find her online at www.gingerko.com.

Staci R. Schoenfeld is a recipient of 2015 NEA Fellowship for Poetry, grants from the Barbara Deming Memorial Fund and the Kentucky Foundation for Women, and residencies from the Ragdale Foundation and Albee Foundation. She is a PhD student at University of South Dakota, assistant editor for poetry at South Dakota Review, and an assistant editor at Sundress Publications. Recent and forthcoming publications include poems in Mid-American Review, Southern Humanities Review, and Room Magazine, fiction in Gingerbread House Literary Magazine, and non-fiction in The Manifest Station.