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.

Aubade with Attention to Rib Cage

                —with first line by Molly McCully Brown

I make an outside world from the space
		beneath my ribs

				where Frida’s moved in.

It’s a comfort to have her there
pillowed down—
				the throb of her
		undulating
				like the surf I crave.
I have no ocean spit
		to paste me together.

I’ve tried every poultice.

Come morning,
		shut-eyed, my skeleton
				papered
				in thinning skin sprawls
on blue linens,
				muscle
		primed to clench
		the pain
				keep it buried
in the bureau drawer of my chest.

When day breaks,
		it’s not
with a clamor of seabirds.

It is Frida I hear,
		Frida
				who comes to me—
				sé gentil
		a balm
beneath my ribs.

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.