The Wardrobe's Best Dressed: lithopaedion by Carrie Nassif

This selection, chosen by guest editor Jillian Fantin, is from lithopaedion by Carrie Nassif, released by Finishing Line Press in 2023.

the unmothering

finally shorn of our mahogany hair the years 	steamrolled flat 
my sister and I untag each other’s velvet ears wondering

how it must have felt for you to bleed out 
to hear your pulse slow

how your beats 
would wane 

us small enough to rest in your blonde arms
your   feather breath on ours

seeing you stitch your own lashes back to their raw lids
undoing your old scars    each new welt we wore

how the strong white tendons of your bare hands 
first pulled us from your living body

then twisted rubber bands so tight around 
we fell away 		unnoticed

Carrie Nassif (she/her) is a queer poet, photographer, and clinical psychologist with a private practice in the rural Midwest. Her chapbook, lithopaedion was published by Finishing Line Press in 2023. Recent work can be found in The Comstock Review, Concision, The Gravity of the Thing, Pomona Valley Review, and Tupelo Quarterly; as well as anthologies such as Slow Lightning: Impractical Poetry, Waves: A Confluence of Woman’s Voices, a virtual anthology with AROHO Press, and forthcoming Written There: The Community of Writers Poetry Review.

Jillian A. Fantin is a writer with roots in the American South and north central England. They are a 2023 Sundress Publications Editorial Intern, a 2021 Martha’s Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing Poet Fellow, and a 2020 Jefferson County Memorial Project Research Fellow. With writer Joy Wilkoff, they co-founded and edit RENESME LITERARY. Jillian’s debut chapbook, A Playdough Symposium, will be released this coming summer from Ghost City Press, and more of their writing appears in American Journal of Poetry, Homology Lit, Tilted House, Spectra Poets, Barrelhouse, and poetry.onl, among others.