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.

After Winter

The ground water
is contaminated
the birds are dying
for unknown reasons

the moon is choking
—the equator is bent

the ozone layer
swallows
its own tongue

the storm drains
fill with acid rain

and the small invisible girl
with the small porcelain doll
is falling backwards

and all she can do
is drink the water
she was given

find the boy
who said he wanted
to be a cartographer
when he grows up

and begin unfolding
his bruised hands

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.