The Wardrobe's Best Dressed: "Trick Rider" by Jen Tynes

Last time I was a conduit we had a bed full

of grain. I didn’t have to wait so long to sink

my weights inside the body, as if catching my clothes

on a very old nail. I’d kiss the hammering

girl between the augurs, millet-‐mouthed

without a television. As if they gather on the line

to make it surface. I sequence the bone

with canary color, honey face, whatever

we wake when we rabbit ear. As if burning barns

weren’t language enough, touch this

handle and finger, come from another

country. Tell me as if I’ve always been struck.

This selection comes from Jen Tynes’ poetry collection Trick Rider, available now from Trembling Pillow Press. Purchase your copy here.

Jen Tynes is the founding editor of Horse Less Press. She is the
author of four full-length books of poetry–Hunter Monies (Black
Radish Books), Trick Rider (Trembling Pillow Press), Heron/Girlfriend
(Coconut Books), and The End Of Rude Handles (Red Morning Press), and
the author or co-author of eight chapbooks. She teaches writing and
lives in Grand Rapids.

Jane Huffman is a current MFA candidate in Poetry at the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop and a staff eDior for Sundress Publications. Her poetry is featured or forthcoming in The Adroit Journal, Moon City Review, Radar Poetry, PHANTOM, Word Riot, The This Magazine, RHINO Poetry, and elsewhere in print and online. She lives in Iowa City, where she teaches literature in the University of Iowa English Department and serves on the poetry staff of The Iowa Review.