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The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Ladies’ Abecedary by Arden Levine

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This selection, chosen by Guest Leslie Rzeznik, is from Ladies' Abecedary by Arden Levine, released by Small Harbor Publishing in 2021.

B

, little she, was told she could be whoever she wished
in the school pageant. So she chose God.

	And God would wear a smudge
	of blue upon her face.

	And God would wear a gown
	of paper and language upon her body.

	And God would wear a crown
	of buoyant clouds upon her noggin.

	And in her throat, God
	would carry lightning, press it white and hard

	into attentive air, like teeth newly cut through tender gums.

In the audience, attendants remark on God:

So many times, God
pissed on me.

	Often, God has thrown her hands wild,
	like warring starlings.

		Twice, God briefly disappeared,
		leaving me blind.

			Once, God vomited, exaltedly,
			into my cupped, supplicant hands.

				Amen.

“B” was previously published in The Indiana Review as “Little she”

Arden Levine’s debut chapbook, Ladies’ Abecedary (Harbor Editions, 2021), was included in CLMP’s 2022 Reading List for Women’s History Month. Her poems and other writing have appeared in American Life in Poetry (selected by Ted Kooser), Barrow Street, Harvard Review, The Missouri Review’s Poem-of-the-Week, Poetry Society of America’s Song Cycle series, WNYC’s Radiolab, and elsewhere. Arden is a reviews writer for Green Linden Press, a Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee, and a New York City municipal employee; her daily work focuses on housing affordability, homelessness prevention, and equitable community development.

Leslie Rzeznik lives in southeast Michigan. She earned her BA in English and Creative Writing from the University of Michigan and won The Academy of American Poets prize in 2013. Her work has appeared in Alyss, Bone Bouquet, Sling Magazine, Willawaw Journal, and Bear River Review.

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