The Wardrobe's Best Dressed: Panacea by Alison Strub

This selection, chosen by guest editor john compton, is from Panacea by Alison Strub (Milk and Cake Press 2023).

Address to Andreas Vesalius

I am brittle like the brittle star.
I planted
gladiolas in the rich earth,
and ate a diet of milk.

I describe myself as
I would a mushroom:
orange-red, polished, fragile, milk white,
black where bruised.

Maybe my face was milk white when you told me.
Maybe my face was milk white when I realized.
Maybe I burned the words you wrote on the page.

The white bread and the milk consumed,
pure soft water poured over the soil.
I hold the mushroom upside down, gills pink,
breathe the scent of pears.

Alison Strub is a hybrid poet and visual artist who received her M.F.A. at George Mason University. Her poems have appeared in Gigantic Sequins, Salt Hill, The Seattle Review, Word For/ Word and other fine publications. Her chapbook, Lillian, Fred, was published by BOAAT Press in 2016. Her book, Panacea, was published in 2023 by Milk & Cake Press and her next book, Dust Rites, is forthcoming from Milk & Cake Press in 2026. She can be reached by telegrams and texts.

john compton (b. 1987) is a gay poet who lives in kentucky with his husband josh and their dogs, cats and mice. his latest full length book is my husband holds my hand because i may drift away & be lost forever in the vortex of a crowded store published with Flowersong Press (dec 2024); his latest chapbook is melancholy arcadia published with Harbor Editions (april 2024).