The Wardrobe's Best Dressed: VOLO by Nathalie Handal

This selection, chosen by guest editor Valyntina Grenier, is from VOLO by Nathalie Handal (Diode Editions 2021).

Téssera

II
Aletheia

[ 2 ]
Suddenly, we remember
time is slanted inside

like statues tilted
after an earthquake.

Suddenly, Ophelia and Sappho
show us our sacred texts,

tell us to take our desires
to different cities

to surrender to them
differently—

how else can
we liberate

what’s been burning
for centuries?

What is real in the world?
What do we find

at the edge of the last gaze
of the heart?

What is divine in our bodies,
what is lost?

Nathalie Handal was raised in Latin America, France and the Middle East, and educated in the United States, United Kingdom and Asia. Her recent poetry books include Life in A Country Album, the flash collection The Republics, the critically acclaimed Poet in Andalucía, and Love and Strange Horses. She is the author of eight plays, editor of two anthologies, and her flash essays and creative nonfiction have appeared in Vanity Fair, Guernica Magazine, The Guardian, The New York Times, The Nation, The Irish Times, among others. Handal is the recipient of awards from the PEN Foundation, the Lannan Foundation, Centro Andaluz de las Letras, Fondazione di Venezia, among others. She is Associate Professor of Practice in Literature & Creative Writing at New York University–AD, and writes the literary travel column ‘The City and the Writer’ for Words without Borders magazine.

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.