The Wardrobe's Best Dressed: Whichever Way the Moon by Mary Ann Honaker

This selection, chosen by guest editor Kirsten Kowalewski, is from Whichever Way the Moo n by Mary Ann Honaker (Main Street Rag 2023).

Covid-19

We who lived as two apples
ripening on one branch,
so close we began to fuse,

now live on opposite coasts.
With your asthma, if infected—
[ I can’t say it ] I can’t

stand by your bedside.
I won’t press my palm
against the protective glass

between me and you.
And oh god if you die,
believe me, I will die too

while still living like a dried
gourd. Shake me to hear
my empty percussion,

my little reliquary of bones.
If death comes wheezing and gasping
for me, I want to but won’t be

under the earth beside you.

Mary Ann Honaker is the author of Becoming Persephone (Third Lung Press, 2019), Whichever Way the Moon (Main Street Rag, 2023) and the forthcoming Night is Another Realm Altogether (Sheila-Na-Gig, 2026). Her poems have appeared in Bear Review, JMWW, Juked, Little Patuxent Review, Rattle.com, Solstice, Sweet Tree Review, and elsewhere. She currently lives in Beckley, West Virginia.

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.