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The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Wolf Hat Iron Shoes by Martha McCollough

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This selection, chosen by Guest Curator Alaina Hanchey, is from Wolf Hat Iron Shoes by Martha McCollough, released by Lily Poetry Review in 2022.

Cacoethes

the hero always says
one more job and I’m done

having left the house—
what is the word
for that regret

she (the hero) longs
to be lost in her labyrinth

dodging shady minotaurs
reeling up loose threads

longs to be harmless
to live on grass or on light

but the nights
are too long
the air smells burnt

like dusty radiators
her gun hand itches

she needs to be
out in the storm
driving anywhere

where the car dies
she’ll stay

like Zatoichi
like Johnny Guitar

Martha McCollough lives in Amherst, Massachusetts. She has an MFA in painting from Pratt Institute. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in QWERTY, Bear Review, Zone 3, and Tampa Review, among others. She is the author of the chapbook Grandmother Mountain (Blue Lyra) and the full length collection Wolf Hat Iron Shoes (Lily Poetry Review Books, 2022).

Alaina Hanchey, known as Harley to both friends and foes, believes rhetoric is intensely important and the way we speak can change the world. That belief was shared by her best friend, Quinn Arielle Kerlin, who inspired her to volunteer and immerse herself in those words that matter, and the connections that matter.

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