The Wardrobe's Best Dressed: Cleave by Tiana Nobile

This selection, chosen by guest curator Sarah Clark, is from Cleave by Tiana Nobile, released by Hub City Press in 2021.

Personal Fiction

Years later, I will tell you I remember the town made of wood, quilted houses with slanted rooftops. I will tell you I remember the hospital, the room where I curled like a bloodless earthworm looking for dirt, the smell of morning nesting in the window, night falling purple on the floor. You will believe me and be jealous. I will cling to this envy, covet it, keep it in a locket that hangs around my neck. I will tell you these things even if they aren’t true. I will convince myself late into the night until I feel the grass grazing my toes, the sun’s heat on my back.

Tiana Nobile is the author of CLEAVE (Hub City Press, 2021). She is a Korean American adoptee, Kundiman fellow, and recipient of a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writer’s Award. A finalist of the National Poetry Series and Kundiman Poetry Prize, her writing has appeared in Poetry Northwest, The New Republic, Guernica, and Southern Cultures, among others. She lives in Bulbancha, aka New Orleans, Louisiana.

Sarah Clark is a disabled non-binary Native (Nanticoke) editor, writer, and cultural consultant. They are Editor-in-Chief of beestung, Editor-in-Chief at ANMLY, Co-Editor at Bettering American Poetry, a Co-Editor of The Queer Movement Anthology, and a member of Sundress Press’s Board of Directors.