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 way my face nowadays slips into my mother’s

slatted shadows wedged onto an edge-worn chair

half sunk into the murky corner of a dusky room



strands of shaggy-barked cedar branches look back

reaching for old leaf-strewn and hard-packed paths



that faded turquoise box filled to bursting with only

crumpled newspapers faded and soft with age



the jagged space between two large limbs where they join nearly kissing 

split into so deep a hollow as to nearly tear itself apart

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.