The Wardrobe's Best Dressed: Astronauts by Amy Miller

This selection, chosen by guest editor Kenli Doss, is from Astronauts by Amy Miller (Beloit Poetry Journal 2022).

Basement

When my sister came back home, she brought Earth, Wind & Fire.
Brought polyester dresses, size 0. Brought pills in a circular pack,
suede wedge heels, leather choker, blue eye shadow. Left her
boyfriend in California. Left his white hands, her black eye. In our
basement, I crashed on her bed on my stomach, feet up and waving,
while we listened to Roberta Flack, Harold Melvin, lyrics on the liner
sleeves. She brought Janis Ian . . . murmured vague obscenities. She
weighed 90 pounds. Brought some kind of sickness that made food
sad. Found a new boyfriend in a tequila sunrise, brought him home
to our parents for dinner just once: quiet, polite, big fro, tight shirt.
We never saw him again. She brought bottles and bottles and bottles.
She stored darkness in the empties. At night they stood on her dresser,
singing old soul songs as the air moved over their mouths.

Amy Miller’s poetry and nonfiction have appeared in Barrow Street, Copper Nickel, Gulf Coast, Narrative, RHINO, Terrain, Tupelo Quarterly, and ZYZZYVA. Her poetry collection The Trouble with New England Girls won the Louis Award from Concrete Wolf Press. Recipient of a 2021 Oregon Literary Fellowship, she lives in Ashland, Oregon, where she works for the Oregon Shakespeare Festival and is the poetry editor of the NPR regional listeners’ guide Jefferson Journal.

Kenli Doss holds a BA in English and a BA in Theatre-Performance from Jacksonville State University. She is a freelance writer and actress based out of Alabama, and she spends her free time painting scenes from nature or writing poetry for her mom. Ken’s works appear in Something Else (a JSU literary arts journal), Bonemilk II by Gutslut Press, Snowflake Magazine, The Shakespeare Project’s Romeo and Juliet Study Guide and A Midsummer Night’s Dream Study Guide, and The White Cresset Arts Journal.