The Wardrobe's Best Dressed: A Registry of Survival by Ann Tweedy

Happy New Year! This selection, chosen by guest editor Valyntina Grenier, is from A Registry of Survival by Ann Tweedy, released by Last Word Press in 2020.

Early March, 2015

I called my mother after that last snowstorm. Once I wrote about it, the worry grew. As did my mace-like wonder about what kind of person I was. When I finally got her, the accumulation still several feet deep, she was okay. She repeated that snow means that she’ll have somewhere to go. We talked about this and that. How my 5-year-old likes school. What my husband’s up to. But a few minutes later, her voice changed—the tone short and the words almost brittle. It was the afternoon. She was in the train station and had to resume calling shelters looking for a one-night spot. They’re busy, she said, so you have to call over and over until they answer.

Ann Tweedy‘s first full-length book, The Body’s Alphabet, was published by Headmistress Press in 2016. It earned a Bisexual Book Award in Poetry and was also a finalist for a Lambda Literary Award and for a Golden Crown Literary Society Award. Ann also has published three chapbooks, Beleaguered Oases (2nd ed. Seven Kitchens 2020), White Out (Green Fuse Poetic Arts 2013), and A Registry of Survival (Last Word 2020). Her poems have appeared in Rattle, Literary Mama, Clackamas Literary Review, Naugatuck River Review, and many other places, and she has been nominated for two Pushcart Prizes and three Best of the Net Awards. A law professor by day, Ann has devoted her career to serving Native Tribes. She currently teaches at University of South Dakota Knudson School of Law.

Valyntina Grenier is a multi-genre eco artist living with her wife in Tucson, AZ. She works with paint, ink, Neon, encaustic medium, recycled or repurposed materials and words. She is the author of Honeymoon Shoes and the chapbooks, Fever Dream/ Take Heart and In Our Now. You’ll find her work in, Beyond Queer Words, Genre: Urban Arts, Impermanent Earth, Lana Turner, The Journal, Querencia, and The Wardrobe. Find her at valyntinagrenier.com or Insta @valyntinagrenier.