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).

The House I Built Didn’t Have a Roof Until I Shouted Your Name

How small’s the sound of colossal things breaking: a rattling. A rug
shaken out. Snow falling like bone dust. Pulverized cloud. Cheeky
bones, lazy bones, funny bones: gone hollow. Blanched marrow.

I had memorized each of your parts, could have filed them in plastic
pouches like the archaeologist whisking her soft brush over femurs
and teeth. Each piece in its place, and no room for nostalgia. But for
you, pursuit was the pleasure, possession passé.

When you die, you’d reminded me, you want to be made into plates.
Bone china. Nobody will dig you up in 2,000 years, speculate, measure
hips, count teeth. Embarrassing, that would be, to be so scrutinized,
like seeing the gynecologist at the grocery.

Awkward, like talking to the grizzled man two houses down, the man
who whittles and, if asked why, says, “Some things are more beautiful
broken,” the secret of bone-setters, of geodes, of the spines of books.

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.