The Wardrobe's Best Dressed: Rat Queen by Katie Jean Shinkle

You Come at the Queen

you best not miss. Or miss so many
times the walls, the air, forests
of pockmarks in futile attempts.
The future is so bright I must leave,
heaving my large meatsack of a body
over such obstacles: a bridge, air hunger,
an ability (any, dis-), seemingly endless
debt/dream ratio. Mea culpa cascades
from a froth opening. Weary,
I am forever grateful.
When on Valentine’s Day
I write you after many months to say:
listen, you are the thing I can never look
at directly for fear of being blinded.

This selection comes from the book, Rat Queen, available from Bloof Books. Purchase your copy here! Our curator for this selection is Krista Cox.

This is Katie Jean Shinkle’s fifth chapbook. She is an Assistant Professor in the MFA Program for Creative Writing, Editing, and Publishing at Sam Houston State University. She is the author of three full-length works, most recently Ruination (Spuyten Duyvil, 2018). Her poetry, prose, and criticisms can be found in Flaunt Magazine, the Georgia Review, Denver Quarterly, New South, the Collagist, Washington Square Review, and elsewhere. She serves as associate fiction editor of ANMLY, co-poetry editor of DIAGRAM.

For money, Krista Cox is a paralegal at an environmental and insurance coverage firm. For joy, she’s an Associate Poetry Editor at Stirring: A Literary Collection and Executive Director of Lit Literary Collective, a nonprofit serving her local literary community. She serves on the board of the Feminist Humanist Alliance. Her poetry has appeared in Columbia Journal, Crab Fat Magazine, The Humanist, and elsewhere. Her internet hangout is http://kristacox.me.