The Wardrobe's Best Dressed: Reading Berryman to the Dog by Wendy Taylor Carlisle

This selection, chosen by guest editor Kenli Doss, is from Reading Berryman to the Dog by Wendy Taylor Carlisle (Belle Point Press 2023).

Kissing the Frog

At the all-night Pancake House,
the plastic seats cracked
and the water glasses etched

by 1000 washings, we connect
eagerly, hurried in from
opposite directions, pale and damp.

At home, we each have
someone perfect we can’t trust—
striped shirts, blond wrists.

Hunched over our cups,
we recall mouth-watering days
at the river. Mayflies hovered

on slack eddies, the sun
leached all colors to olive drab.
Should I ask if you still believe

in wet kisses rising
to the surface like catfish?
Should I say

I’m still the same hungry princess
prying at the sticky menu
where I wish to find our story,

read it out loud and discover
what comes after happy.
Is it the picture of me lying

on your chest?
The slithery touch? Is it the kiss
that changes your face?

Imagine us. How it would be
to open our ribs,
to gather in the small, dark frogs.

Wendy Taylor Carlisle lives in the Arkansas Ozarks. She is the author of four books and five chapbooks and is the 2020 winner of the Phillip H. McMath Post-Publication Award for her fourth book, The Mercy of Traffic.

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.