The Wardrobe's Best Dressed: Transitory by Subhaga Crystal Bacon

This selection, chosen by guest editor Valyntina Grenier, is from Transitory by Subhaga Crystal Bacon (BOA Editions Ltd. 2023).

I Have Room for You in Me: A Litany

For the handsome trans-woman and cis-gender wife,
for the suit and tie and heels, for the skirt and corset
and beard, I have room. No one can say a life is not right.
I have room for you in me. For the one whose father

loved her like a son until she became one, I have room
for you in me. For those who claim their own names,
break free from the limited born-as cocoon, for the one
with the wide-hipped sashay, big hands smoothing her dress,

I have room for you in me.

For him whose voice rings high, whose chest bears scars
under hair and ink, I have room. For the one who wears
their self-made clothes and hand-painted shoes, not trying to pass,
I have room for you in me. For the pregnant man, and woman father,

I have room for you in me. For the sex worker’s food
and rent. For the elderly boy’s sparse whiskers and soft eyes.
For the statuesque matron, the broad beamed man; for your lives
and your loves and your rights, I have room.

I have room for you in me.

Subhaga Crystal Bacon is a Queer poet living in rural northcentral Washington on unceded Methow land. She is the author of four collections of poetry. Her latest book, Transitory, is the recipient of the Isabella Gardner Award for Poetry, from BOA Editions, and was listed in the Library Journal’s list of Books to Read in 2023. She’s the author of Surrender of Water in Hidden Places, 2023, winner of the Red Flag Poetry Chapbook Prize, Blue Hunger, Methow Press, 2020, and Elegy with a Glass of Whiskey, winner of the A. Poulin New Poetry America Prize, BOA Editions, 2004. A Pushcart and Best of the Net nominee, she’s a teaching artist working in schools and libraries with youth and adults, as well as private students. Her work appears in a variety of print and online journals including The Diode Poetry Journal, The Bellevue Literary Review, Indianapolis Review, Ghost City Review and others.

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.