The Wardrobe's Best Dressed: The Best Best Dressed of 2024

This week, Managing Editor Krista Cox shares her 5 favorite books featured on The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed in 2024, and shares a new selection from each.

Krista’s first selection for the best of 2024 is Teaching a Wild Thing by Kindra McDonald (Kelsay Books 2022), originally chosen by guest editor Layla Lenhardt.

In the Six Days Without Power After Hurricane Isabel, We Try to
Save Our Marriage

Category 1 winds 74-95 mph – very dangerous

We have left our rolling hills and basements for this new town of
flooding and bridge lifts and Weather Channel Acts of God, as if a
change of scenery could change us, but wherever you go, there you
are. In the days of build-up and tension you stock supplies and
horde water, there is lots of alcohol. I want to leave, you want to
stay, and so we play at tug of war and you are always stronger. We
lose power before the winds even start. The late summer heat
settles in, the quiet pours over us like concrete.

Category 2 winds 96-110 – extremely dangerous

By noon the howling has taken on a musical quality, whistling and
punctuating our yelling with its rising pitch and crescendo of
ripping shingles. You climb onto our porch rail to repair the
flapping siding, I grip you by your belt loops hold you steady,
wishing we never moved here, never married, wish we never met,
you spit as the wind whips the house, shutters fly like magic
carpets, what is left to hold on to?

Category 3 winds 111-129 – devastating damage

Debris is flying and falling, we retreat to our corners then square
off again as dusk settles in and we are gray shadows slipping past
each other. We do what we do when we’ve lost our voices, toss our
bodies toward each other wave after wave, drag sheets from room
to room, re-enact a camping trip over candlelight and tin beans, tell
soft stories that make us smile. The eye is over us, quiet and calm
and even in this dark we see that white-knuckled love is not
enough.

Category 4 winds 130-156 – catastrophic damage

Days without power, milk curdling sour, the rotting drip of
thawing meat and humidity hangs heavy as a vow. We are wrung
out from crying, sick and sleepless. Our lives swim through the
flooded kitchen, a floating champagne flute, a sterling cake server.
Windows shatter and 12 packs come and go in fever dreams of
broken bottles and picture frames. The pines are ripped from the
lawn and it’s obvious how shallow the roots are.

Category 5 winds are 157 mph or higher – recovery may take
months to years

The neighbor says it will be weeks before the road is clear. It’s
prison, and we beg each other for parole. We dry out, pack our
hearts in separate boxes, mitigate the hemorrhage in the roof.
Without streetlights and screen glare we can see the stars so
clearly, funny how we know they’re always there. When the
generators around us roar to life, there is nothing left to say.

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.