The Wardrobe's Best Dressed: Yearn by Rage Hezekiah

This selection, chosen by guest editor Tierney Bailey, is from Yearn by Rage Hezekiah, released by Diode Editions in 2022.

Amends

You taught me

to foster rage

momentum

on the inside

of my woman-body

a vascular anthem.

I can say

the sick man’s prayer

by memory:

this is a sick person

how can I

be helpful to them

god save me

from being angry

thy will be done.

My own anger

a white flag

of concession.

I’ve laid down

tired mitts

& won’t hit

again. How lovely

to be out

of your range.

Swing

away.

You missed

the irony

that the poem

you redacted

confronts denial.

Secrecy a symptom

of our disease—

We’re only

as sick

as our secrets.

Still you sequester

bury shame

in the garden

of my childhood home

hide &

don’t heal.

But didn’t

the confessional

free you?

Didn’t

an anonymous man

absolve your guilt?

Mother

what freedom

I feel

to not be

yours.

Rage Hezekiah is a Cave Canem, Ragdale, and MacDowell Fellow who earned her MFA from Emerson College. She is a recipient of the Saint Botolph Emerging Artist Award and she serves as Interviews Editor at The Common. She is the author of Unslakable (Paper Nautilus Press, 2019) and Stray Harbor (Finishing Line Press, 2019). Rage’s poems have appeared in the Academy of American Poets Poem-a-Day, The Cincinnati Review, The Colorado Review, and many other journals and anthologies.

Tierney Bailey is a Libra, a lover of science fiction and poetry, and is a dice-collecting gremlin. Currently, Tierney is Associate Poetry Editor with Sundress Publications, a copyeditor at Strange Horizons, Associate Editor with PodCastle, and a freelance graphic designer. She has earned a BA from the University of Indianapolis and a Masters Degree in Writing, Literature, and Publishing from Emerson College.