This selection, chosen by guest editor Jillian Fantin, is from If I Could Write You a Happier Ending by Mary Warren Foulk, released by dancing girl press in 2021.
Ruefle’s Pink
—after Mary Ruefle
Pink sadness is Adam’s rib swathed in an apron, still reeling from the ring of fire. Pink is that beautiful sadness of birth wrapped in pink cotton blankets. Pink sadness is the yawns of newborns, and husbands napping unaware of sour laundry or antique dishes crusting in the sink. It is the sadness of scented vows, yellowed and lost in the back of a dresser drawer, sometimes found on a random Sunday or re-read at milestone cocktail parties. Pink sadness is the snapshot sunsets and sunrises witnessed during daily commutes, and the ticked hours between strong coffee and evening’s last kiss. Pink sadness is soft lips on a child’s sleeping cheek. It is the shadowing memory of mothers and grandmothers, their imperfect models smiling back from mantels. Pink sadness is the daughters they create.
Mary Warren Foulk has been published in Fjords Review, The Hollins Critic, Pine Hills Review, Palette Poetry, Silkworm, and Steam Ticket, among other publications. Her work also has appeared in (M)othering Anthology (Inanna Publications), and My Loves: A Digital Anthology of Queer Love Poems (Ghost City Press). Her chapbook, If I Could Write You a Happier Ending, was selected by dancing girl press (2021) for their annual series featuring women poets. Her manuscript Self-Portrait with Erosion was a finalist for the 2021 Gival Press Poetry Award.
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.
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