The Wardrobe's Best Dressed: We are Now the Thing in the Woods by Lauren Parker

This selection, chosen by guest editor H.V. Cramond, is from We are Now the Thing in the Woods by Lauren Parker (Bottlecap Press 2023).

Love like a Swamp

Swamp is open craw, gulping throat
Where everything unloved collects
And sits, held, held for the first time
Rough things, pointed and sharp
Cradled for the first time in sitting water

Wait and see what happens, what grows
What ridges run along the surface of the water
Soak up your secrets and never spit them out
No body, no crime, no nothing on the surface
The swamp owns the dark bits, all that
You killed and that might kill you and it loves
It loves you, your secrets, your teeth rested
Against its algae frosted ear
Speak quietly, it can still hear you
Join its loved unloved collection, and grow to fit
Your container in the swamp heart
Wet and wide and so full of blood it can
Run the world, a swamp is a warm
Hand pressing against the heat of your chest
Fingers in your mouth, something to suck on
As you sink, closing your lilypad eyes

You are only beautiful if you break the surface
Pulling sun down to muddy murky carp dwelling reeds
Let it eat, nibble you, pulls the sheath off your roots
Strip to green shoot and stalk, no barriers

Love like a swamp, are you burning down or
Cracking open, let the water in, let it fill you
Gasp your last fragments of air
Learn to love the bottom of something in return.

Lauren Parker is a writer, zinemaker, and visual artist in Oakland, California. She has written for the Toast, Strange Horizons, The Racket, Xtra Magazine, Catapult, and Autostraddle. She is the author of the poetry collection We Are Now the Thing in the Woods with Bottlecap Press, The Dark Way Down with Animal Heart Press (2025), and Spells for Success: 40 Spells to Set Intentions and Manifest Everyday Wins with Simon Element (2025). She also has a newsletter, Do You Want to Do Some Witchcraft?

H.V. Cramond holds an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and was the founding Poetry Editor of Requited Journal for 10 years. In 2018, she helped pass the Survivor’s Bill of Rights in Illinois as an organizer for Rise. Read more of her writing on her website.