The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Summertime Fine by Jason B Crawford

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Untitled (Teagu)

nikki say
ain’t no black like

a sunday dinner at big mama’s house
where everyone opens a container of come here

and is fed for the summer
big mama cooks from the heritage of open house
where every mouth has a spot at the table
a neighborhood of kin whipped dark
linda always used to talk about the celebration

we would stir into the pot
a boiled heep of unfiltered laughs

seasoned and held in the bottom of the jaw
ain’t nothing else ever been that baked into us
and ain’t nothing else ever will be again

This selection comes from Summertime Fine, available from Variant Literature. Purchase your copy here! Our curator for this selection is Nilsa Rivera.

JASON B. CRAWFORD (He/They) is a black, nonbinary, bi-poly-queer writer born in Washington DC, raised in Lansing, MI. In addition to being published in online literary magazines, such as High Shelf Press, Wellington Street Review, Poached Hare, The Amistad, Royal Rose, and Kissing Dynamite, he is the Chief Editor for The Knight’s Library. Jason is a cofounder of the Poetry Collective MMPR, a group of poets who came together for laughs, bad memes, and nerd culture. He is also the recurring host of the poetry section for Ann Arbor Pride. Crawford has his Bachelors of Science in Creative Writing from Eastern Michigan University. Nilsa Rivera Castro writes about gender and diversity issues. She’s also the Managing Editor of The Wardrobe and the Non-Fiction Editor of Doubleback Review. Her work appears or is forthcoming in Huffington Post, 50 GS Magazine, Six Hens Literary Journal, Assay: A Journal of Nonfiction Studies, Selkie Literary Magazine, and Writing Class Radio. She’s currently an MFA Nonfiction candidate at Vermont College of Fine Art and lives in Riverview, Florida.