The Wardrobe's Best Dressed: Cancer Voodoo by Melissa C. Johnson

This selection, chosen by Managing Editor Krista Cox, is from Cancer Voodoo by Melissa C. Johnson, released by Diode Editions in 2022.

content warning for cancer

Simultaneous Equations

Pi is always a constant even
if the circle is imagined.
Elvis singing in the background
as we counted her last breaths.
Judy Brown at the funeral
on crutches, their tips
sinking in the wet grass.

Melissa C. Johnson is a Southern poet living in Central Pennsylvania where she serves as Associate Vice Provost and Associate Dean for Undergraduate Education at The Pennsylvania State University. Her first poetry chapbook, Looking Twice at the World, was published by Stepping Stones Press and the South Carolina Poetry Initiative. Diode Editions published her second chapbook, Cancer Voodoo, poems from which have been featured at American Life in Poetry and Verse Daily. Her poetry has also been published at NELLE, Waccamaw, Borderlands, The Cortland Review, The Northern Virginia Review, and elsewhere.