The Wardrobe's Best Dressed: On Shifting Shoals by Joanne Durham

This selection, chosen by guest editor Kirsten Kowalewski, is from On Shifting Shoals by Joanne Durham (Kelsay Books 2023).

Orange Butterflies/Orange Blossoms

They match
                the way lovers match,
how lives blend into one
                another, how for one
                     sunlit
                                moment
                you can’t tell
                                wing from bloom

Joanne Durham is the author of To Drink from a Wider Bowl, winner of the Sinclair Poetry Prize (Evening Street Press, 2022) and the chapbook, On Shifting Shoals, (Kelsay Books 2023). Other awards include Third Wednesday’s annual poetry contest, the Mary Ruffin Poole Prize, Prime Number Magazine’s Summer Challenge, and 3 Pushcart nominations. Her poems appear in Poetry South, Poetry East, Vox Populi, Cider Press Review, CALYX, Cutthroat, James Crews’ anthology, The Wonder of Small Things, and many other journals and anthologies. She lives on the North Carolina coast, with the ocean as her backyard and muse.

Kirsten Kowalewski has a master’s degree in library science and a specialist’s certificate in school media services for grades K-12. She reads widely. and is the editor for horror and dark fiction review website Monster Librarian. This is her third time curating for The Wardrobe.