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 lost Pleiad

but here

this is a piccolo humming  
a kazoo made from the susurrating backs of insect wings

a wavering heartbeat

a perpetual boomerang returning and departing
hidden in a seashell wish 

a headache throb a message microscoped in tears

the giddy rush of room to grow 
from tending inner space

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.