The Wardrobe's Best Dressed: Personal Science by Lillian-Yvonne Bertram

The gunslinger neuron
Everyone should get in touch with their inner fate

of snow afflicted by a bad case of the doldrums.

Reader, I would not live in a powderless tree: If I could

I would align myself with the powerscape.

At times I practice being sad in the mirror.

I practice a blister. My murder face.

Of what I remind myself I am not sure.

Some calypso in the distance.

Beakers of candid morning.

A snow cannot be a lie.

This selection comes from the collection Personal Science, available from Tupelo Press. Order your copy here. Our curator for November is M. Mack.

In addition to Personal Science (Tupelo Press), Lillian-Yvonne Bertram is the author of a slice from the cake made of air (Red Hen Press), the chapbook cutthroat glamours (Phantom Books), But a Storm is Blowing from Paradise (Red Hen Press), chosen by Claudia Rankine as winner of the 2010 Benjamin Saltman Award, and Grand Dessein, an artist book available from Container. Lillian-Yvonne teaches in the MFA program at UMASS Boston.

M. Mack is a genderqueer poet, editor, and fiber artist in Virginia. Ze is the author of Theater of Parts (Sundress Publications, 2016) and three chapbooks, most recently MINE (Big Lucks Books, forthcoming 2017). Their work has appeared in such places as cream city review, Cloud Rodeo, Rogue Agent, Menacing Hedge, and The Queer South (Sibling Rivalry Press, 2014). Mack is a founding co-editor of Gazing Grain Press, an assistant editor for Cider Press Review, and the monster maker behind What Is Reality Plushies. Find them at mxmack.com.