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).

content warning for transphobia and gun violence

Yampi Mendez Arocho, 19, Moca, Puerto Rico, March 5

Fuck love; I don’t believe in it anymore.

The day before you were killed, Yampi, this is what you wrote.
Now I’m left wondering, is that what the world gave you?

There’s not enough to answer the questions:

		The woman who assaulted you five hours before?
		Did you go home for help from your mother,
		who reported the assault to the police?

Then you were dead.

		This we know: shot twice in the face and twice in the back
		in the community playground, in Moca, where you grew up.

The day before you were shot, a selfie in front of a mirror—

		There’s a blue-eyed tiger tattooed on the back of your left hand,
		a cross on your right forearm. Your shoulders are wide
		under a turquoise shirt, diagonal lines of red flamingos

		all rest on one leg. The nails on your slender fingers
		are long. A thin rectangular pendant hangs on silver chain
		down your chest. Your face is narrow, fox like.

Deeply set shadowed eyes look at your phone.

Flamingos represent an open heart, balance, grace.
Yampi, where is your gaze?

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.