The Wardrobe's Best Dressed: Teaching a Wild Thing by Kindra McDonald

This selection, chosen by guest editor Layla Lenhardt, is from Teaching a Wild Thing by Kindra McDonald (Kelsay Books 2022).

Death of a Ghost

Dear K,

Could we send letters back in time?
Crying now over the death of a ghost

a weight so buoyant the pallbearers
could be mice, mournful and misty-eyed.

No harm has come to pass,
I might say. Wishful thinking,

you would say. Hindsight is 20/20—
and we’d both laugh. If I wrote a letter

to myself, I’d hold it up to the light
warm the invisible ink over fire

watch the alphabet spiral to the clouds
like smoke, hear the sad, same three notes

of a bugle leading a funeral procession.
You could turn my letters into words

or into paper airplanes you could race
or crash or hatch into new life, you would say

I told you so.

Love, K

Kindra McDonald is the author of the collections Teaching a Wild Thing, Fossils and In the Meat Years. She was the recipient of the 2020 Haunted Waters Press Poetry Award. She received her MFA from Queens University of Charlotte and is a poet-artist working and teaching in mixed-media and found poetry. She served as the Poetry Society of Virginia Southeastern region Vice President from 2019-2022. You can find her in the woods or at www.kindramcdonald.com.

Layla Lenhardt (she/they) is an American poet. She is founder and Editor-in-Chief of the (currently on hiatus) national literary journal 1932 Quarterly. Her essays, poems, short prose, and interviews have been published across various types of media, including a pickle jar, a post card, and a bathroom stall in Dublin. She is a 2021 Best of the Net Nominee and was a judge for Poetry Super Highway’s Annual Contest in 2022. Her first full-length poetry collection, Mother Tongue, was published by Main Street Rag Publications (2023). She is a 2022 alumna of the SAFTA residency.