The Wardrobe's Best Dressed: Gastromythology by Jessica Manack

This selection, chosen by guest editor Shira Haus, is from Gastromythology by Jessica Manack (Sheila-Na-Gig Editions, 2024).

Where

There, in the library. Free to the people. In the field outside the
chapel. In the chapel. At the pulpit, whatever they call it. These places
other people built for other people: we made them ours. Outside the
cemetery, where no one complained. Outside the stable, where no
one was disgusted. On the city bus, anonymous. In the parts of my
body I had just learned to cover up. There, hungover, over eggs. Our
houses might as well have been façades. We broke out at dusk, broke
into song on the sidewalk. No, we’re all out of snacks! No, you can’t use
the bathroom! I was named after an actress. You were named after a
flower. And there, in the underpass that’s always flooded, we joined
our puzzle-piece teeth. We ignored the graffiti. There, on the
Greyhound bus, I braved New England to find you. In the listening
room, you played me Phil Ochs for the first time, dropped the needle
like a professional. There, but for fortune. The death heavy in his voice.
We chose life over and over. We chose to sink into each other.

Jessica Manack holds degrees from Hollins University and lives with her family in Pittsburgh, where she serves on the editorial teams of Belt Magazine and the Pittsburgh Review of Books and as poetry reader for TriQuarterly. Her recent work explores her family of origin, the melting pot of America in general and northern Appalachia in particular, and the challenges and joys of girlhood, womanhood and motherhood. Her writing has appeared widely in anthologies and journals, and her poetry collection Gastromythology was published in 2024 by Sheila-Na-Gig Editions, as the winner of their First Chapbook Contest.

Shira Leah Haus (she/her) is a queer, antizionist Jewish writer from Michigan. Her work appears or is forthcoming in Poetry Magazine, Passages North, Poetry Northwest, and wildness, among others. She has received support from the Napa Valley Writers’ Conference and placed third in the 2024 Pinch Literary Awards for poetry.