The Wardrobe's Best Dressed: Self-Portrait with Thorns by Gail Goepfert

This selection, chosen by guest editor Amber Alexander, is from Self-Portrait with Thorns by Gail Goepfert, released by Glass Lyre Press in 2021.

Dear Right Leg

I was nearly weightless—
		a plume
				a plum
		the sun
its yellow love
		barely coppered
the thin-boned arc
		of my shoulders.

Limbs are meant to be steady.

How am I to strike
		the earth in balance
				to run
						cobbled streets.

You were my pillar.

		Now I
				lumber.
Polio’s
		atrophy.
				No girlish skip—
not yet even
		chrysalis.

I don’t need you
		Right Leg
				to rise.

Gail Goepfert is an ardent poet, photographer, and teacher. She’s an associate editor of RHINO Poetry and teaches classes online at National Louis University. She is the author of This Hard Business of Living (Seven Kitchens Press, 2021) and Self-Portrait with Thorns (Glass Lyre Press, 2021), as well as other chapbooks and full-length books. Recent poem publications appear in After Hours, The Examined Life Journal, Night Heron Barks, Inflectionist Review, and Rogue Agent. She lives, writes, and snaps photos in the Chicagoland area.

Amber Alexander, who publishes creative work as e. holloway, is a poet based in Ohio. They currently work in higher education and as an Assistant Editor for Best Of The Net within Sundress Publications. Alexander is a former Editorial Intern for Sundress Publications, former Editorial Board Member for Cornfield Review, and was a Sundress Academy for The Arts Writing Resident in 2023. Their work has been published by Cornfield Review and earned multiple awards during undergrad at The Ohio State University.