The Wardrobe's Best Dressed: Of the Forest by Linda Ferguson

This selection, chosen by guest editor Shlagha Borah, is from Of the Forest by Linda Ferguson, released by The Poetry Box in 2022.

née DeForest

			de la forêt 

feminine, 

noun – 

			(person, place 

							or thing) 

shelter of fallen logs thick 

			with moss and mystery 
of wild spores – chanterelles and hen of the woods – 
		also bodies of claws and ink-striped fur 

		     that crouch, 

			slink, 

			     pounce 

through feathered shadows 
and strips of light.

A five-time Pushcart nominee, Linda Ferguson is a writer of poetry, fiction and essays. Her chapbook Of the Forest was the 2nd place winner of The Poetry Box Chapbook Prize, 2021, and another collection, Not Me: Poems About Other Women, was published by Finishing Line Press in 2022.

Shlagha Borah (she/her) is a poet from Assam, India. Her work appears in Salamander, Nashville Review, Identity Theory, Longleaf Review, Variant Literature, Rogue Agent, and elsewhere. She is pursuing an MFA in Poetry at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, and is an Associate Poetry Editor at Grist. She has received support for her work from Brooklyn Poets and Sundress Academy for the Arts. She is the co-founder of Pink Freud, a student-led collective working towards making mental health accessible in India.