The Wardrobe's Best Dressed: (aviary) by Genevieve Kaplan

This selection, chosen by Guest Curator Callista Buchen, is from (aviary) by Genevieve Kaplan, released by Velize Books in 2020.

It is so sweet this sugar, the sugar

and it meant something and it meant something to me
soothing in the springtime though the seeds eaten

and it meant something and it meant something, something
in the springtime, through the seeds, prowling out the night time
windows open, sash ajar, novices out (outshone) the bars, the slats
not so far away as we would like. soft (no). a hiss
to the monument of dusk coming quickly. how ought
I introduce it? how might it to me? soft time of the world, soft
hour of the hard night

Genevieve Kaplan is the author of (aviary) (Veliz Books, 2020), In the ice house (Red Hen Press, 2011), and four chapbooks, most recently I exit the hallway and turn right (above/ground, 2020), an anti-ode to office work. Her recent poems can be found in Posit, Puerto Del Sol, ethel, can we have our ball back?, and elsewhere. She lives in southern California where she edits the Toad Press International chapbook series, publishing contemporary translations of poetry and prose.

Callista Buchen is the author of the full-length collection Look Look Look (Black Lawrence Press, 2019), and the chapbooks The Bloody Planet (Black Lawrence Press, 2015) and Double-Mouthed (dancing girl press, 2016). Her work appears in Harpur Palate, Puerto del Sol, Fourteen Hills, and many other journals. She is the winner of the DIAGRAM’s essay contest and the C.D Wright conference’s Emerging Writer award, and is the founder of the Carlson-Stauffer Reading Series at Franklin College.