The Wardrobe's Best Dressed: We Know Each Other By Our Wounds by Jude Marr

This selection, chosen by Guest Curator Kirsten Kowalewski, is from We Know Each Other By Our Wounds by June Marr, released by Animal Heart Press in 2020.

Pacing My Midtown Neighborhood

On Marietta Street, a light pole rusts
and falls, wind-whacked
across snaggletooth sidewalk
								I step

over wires to where broken pavers heave
out of Georgia’s red earth: traffic snaps
as I cross the street, seeing no one
but the man who sells umbrellas
								he asks

for a dime: his hand
contains a fractal wave of coins, as proof: his palm
seams ancient
								I move

smoothly as a jointed doll along Hollowell, past
the teen who pirouettes, their body
beautiful, their mouth
dribbling honey
								I’m not real

by the Mobil station
there’s a package store sells
vodka by the quarter pint: one woman pushes
her hand against my face—

You got ID? she asks. Show me
ID—

I’m on Lowery now: boarded
homes, fragile as leaf-skeletons: oak-shaded, empty
lots; porch life; preachers—

Can I give you a pamphlet? No? Okay. Jesus
loves you anyway—

left onto Boone, where a yard contains
players with a stake in every game
								I pass

the one whose dress shirt
radiates: blinded
								I nod back.

Jude Marr (they, them) is a Pushcart-nominated nonbinary poet. Jude’s first full-length collection, We Know Each Other By Our Wounds, came out from Animal Heart Press in 2020. Recent work appears in Leavings, Icefloe Press’s Work and the Anthropocene, Boats Against the Current, and Moria. Jude is currently on the masthead at SWWIM Miami and Poetry is Currency, and works as an editor with freelance clients in both the US and the UK.

Kirsten Kowalewski is the editor for online horror fiction review resource Monster Librarian. She has an MLS and a specialist certificate in school library media from Indiana University, has worked as a children’s librarian and elementary school media specialist, and is a lifelong reader.