This selection, chosen by guest editor Layla Lenhardt, is from MOTHERDEVIL by Kailey Tedesco (White Stag Publishing 2024).
pinelands
enter me
darkness felt-thick
trees bouquet their fascicles
cranberry bog-swaddled
kettle steam echoes the
wyvern-flit window
there is nowhere left to hide among
the pines & pines & pines
each of them a musical
praying horse head
a roadside corsage
my newest infant’s birthmarks bite
it is here they will legend me with broomsticks
between my legs & legs & legs
always just beneath
your strip-malls & sundry shops
their light is spooling too
Kailey Tedesco is the author of four full-length collections of poetry, including Lizzie, Speak (winner of White Stag Publishing’s 2018 Poetry Contest). Her most recent work, MOTHERDEVIL, is out now from White Stag Publishing. She teaches courses on Gothic literature and writing and she is a member of the Horror Writers Association. Recently, her poetry placed both first & second place in the Science Fiction Poetry Association’s 2024 Speculative Poetry Contest. You can find her work in Electric Literature, Fairy Tale Review, Black Warrior Review, Epiphany Lit, The Journal, Driftwood Press, Passages North, and more. 
Layla Lenhardt is the author of the full-length poetry collection Mother Tongue (Main Street Rag 2023). She is an alumna of the Firefly Farms Residency and a member of the Sundress Reader Board. She is currently working on her second full length poetry collection Little Spoon, and she is an MFA candidate at IU.
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