The Wardrobe's Best Dressed: Prime Meridian by Connie Post

This selection, chosen by Guest Curator Sally Rosen Kindred, is from Prime Meridian by Connie Post, released by Glass Lyre Press in 2020.

Solstice

There are cemeteries
off the main road
of the body

clusters of tombstones beneath the skin
a swollen spot on the back of your neck

there are dates engraved
in the shallow
spaces beneath your rib cage

you bring orchids to a clearing
in the slivered grass
you kneel when no one is looking

you unfold your hands
—wonder how the Eucalyptus
grew so tall — so fast
how your bones bend
with gale force winds

as you turn away
from your salt bone self
distant cars pass by
people point and wonder
about the gravel path
etched
beyond your calcified spine

you don’t hear the cars
all you hear are the
grave diggers
coming towards you
begging you to unhinge
your mouth

imploring you
to pull out each grief
place each quietly
on the stones
with no name

Connie Post served as the first Poet Laureate of Livermore, California . Her work has appeared in Calyx, River Styx, Slipstream, The American Journal of Poetry, Spoon River Poetry Review, Valparaiso Poetry Review and Verse Daily. Her awards include the Liakoura Award, and the Crab Creek Review Poetry Award. Her first full length book Floodwater won the Lyrebird Award. Her second full length collection (also by Glass Lyre Press), Prime Meridian, was released in January 2020 and was a finalist in the Best book Awards and International Book Awards.

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.