The Wardrobe's Best Dressed: "I Want To Eat So Many Kinds of Cake With You" by Kelly Lorraine Andrews

“Suffocation Ritual”

A furrow of feral prowl I drive
the long drive to your house again

and wait in reticence as the cellar
door wind-slaps against brittle wood.

Weeks ago we were wild in bundling,
a warmth like a filament tarnishing

a bulb until charred. If I could bury
all that longing I would use my breath

to unthaw the stark sediment
of your backyard, puncture it

with my overwrought tongue & boil
a broth from the weathered bramble.

I would singe a spoon and feed you this
until our muteness came undone.

This selection comes from the poetry collection I Want To Eat So Many Kinds of Cake With You, available from Dancing Girl Press. Order your copy here.

Kelly Lorraine Andrews‘ poems have appeared or are forthcoming in PANK, Prick of the Spindle, SELFISH, and Love Me, Love My Belly, among others. She is the author of the chapbooks The Fear Archives (forthcoming, Two of Cups Press), My Body Is a Poem I Can’t Stop Writing (forthcoming, Porkbelly Press), I Want To Eat So Many Kinds of Cake With You and Mule Skinner (both from Dancing Girl Press). She holds an MFA in poetry from the University of Pittsburgh. She also coedits the online journal Pretty Owl Poetry and curates its Pittsburgh reading series. Additional information about her publications, along with a slideshow of her cats, can be found at kellyandrewspoetry.com.

Beth Couture‘s work can be found in a number of journals and anthologies, including Gargoyle, Drunken Boat, The Southeast Review, Ragazine, and Thirty Under Thirty from Starcherone Books. Her novella, Women Born with Fur, was published by Jaded Ibis Press in 2014 as part of its Blue Bustard Novellas series. She graduates with her Master’s in Social Work at Bryn Mawr College in May, and she lives in West Philly with her husband and five cats.