The Wardrobe's Best Dressed: When the Trumpet Is Blown by Quraishiyah Durbarry

This selection, chosen by guest editor Merrick Sloane, is from When the Trumpet Is Blown by Quraishiyah Durbarry (Resource Publications, 2023).

10.

The cradle went this way
And that
Back and forth
And forth
And back
A motion that will die in time
But not now
Not soon
It cradles physics
And mass and matter
It cradles beings I guess
And souls too
I imagine a soul back and forth
Love back and forth
Sadness back and forth
And perhaps petty happiness too
And I imagine a ripple in the future
When you died
And a tear in the past
A thousand years before
Ripping the present
To a cut in the future
Travelling back

And creating the deluge
That drowned all but Noah’s Ark

Quraishiyah Durbarry is a doctoral student in comparative literature at the University of Clermont Auvergne and has so far ventured into several genres, including poetry, novel, and drama. A bilingual author, Quraishiyah writes in both English and French. She was Co-Laureate and Laureate of the Writing Prize for the Passe Portes Festival of the European Union in 2015 and 2016 respectively.

Merrick Sloane (they/them) is a neuro-Queer 90’s kid and nonbinary poet, editor, and researcher from Oklahoma who’s a sucker for expletives and second languages. They hold an MFA in creative writing from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville and are Associate Poetry Editor of Doubleback Review. Merrick’s work has appeared in The Central Dissent: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality, Stories for the Road: Trauma and Internal Communication, BLEACH!, citizen trans* {project}, Arcana Poetry and is forthcoming in Puerto del Sol and ANMLY. Merrick’s poetry was recently selected as a winner of the Garden Party Collective’s contest on Neurodivergence / Intersectionality and as a winner for AWP’s 2025 Intro Journal Awards. Their work has received support from the DreamYard Rad(ical) Poetry Consortium and Sundress Publications. Merrick writes so that others may feel radically loved.