The Wardrobe's Best Dressed: Atlas of Lost Places by Yamini Pathak

This selection, chosen by Guest Curator Sally Rosen Kindred, is from Atlas of Lost Places by Yamini Pathak, released by Milk and Cake Press in 2020.

Ghazal for the Morning Slipped Away

Once you slow-ripened on a tree, a plum purpling to
bruise, assayed, awaited pretty mouths puckered to pluck

The arc of the aubade bent away, while you spun
the stars to sleep, unlock that chest, unloose your fists full of pluck

Afternoon sun held captive in an abandoned well, a contentment
of pigeons is no ruffled tremolo, no flighty pizzicato pluck

Late in the day, drench the air with the sweat of bees, sinew a song
to vein their wings, roses lose their perfume soon after they’re plucked

You’re a stranger in the garden, late-bloomer with gypsy heart
your caravan song, from your spotted tongue, like thorns you pluck

Yamini Pathak is the author of the chapbooks Atlas of Lost Places (Milk and Cake Press) and Breath Fire Water Song (Ghost City Press Summer Series 2021). Her poetry and non-fiction have appeared in Vida Review, Waxwing, Kenyon Review blog, Anomaly, Kweli Journal, and other places. She serves as poetry editor for Inch micro-chapbooks (Bull City Press) and as a Dodge Foundation Poet in Schools. Yamini is an MFA candidate at Antioch University, Los Angeles. She is an alumnus of VONA/Voices (Voices of Our Nations Arts Foundation), and Community of Writers.

Sally Rosen Kindred‘s third poetry book is Where the Wolf (Diode Editions, 2021). She is also the author of Book of Asters and No Eden, as well as three chapbooks, including Says the Forest to the Girl (Porkbelly Press, 2018). Her poems have appeared in Alaska Quarterly Review, Los Angeles Review, Shenandoah, and Kenyon Review Online. She teaches online workshops for The Poetry Barn.