The Wardrobe's Best Dressed: I Was One of My Memories by Laurie Blauner

This selection, chosen by guest editor Valyntina Grenier, is from I Was One of My Memories by Laurie Blauner (Pank Books 2021).

Gender Instructions

     My heart is not violent.
     Dig a hole and fill it with a body of water.
     I speak to myself during dance class.
     Carve a man’s body that spills everywhere.
     I was created long ago as a sentence. Bone and skin.
     Move your genitals this way, then the other way.
     I’m disappearing into a soft body.
     I’m still here.

Laurie Blauner is the author of eight books of poetry, five novels, and a hybrid non-fiction book called I Was One of My Memories that won PANK’s CNF Book Award. Her work has appeared in Tupelo Quarterly, Georgia Review, Superstition Review, The Nation, The New Republic, Poetry, and many other magazines.

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.