The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Mapping the Borderlands by Barbara Sabol

This selection, chosen by Guest Editor Romy Ewing, is from Mapping the Borderlands by Barbara Sabol (Sheila-Na-Gig Editions 2025).

Letting the Kneeler Down

Forgive me the absence of all feeling. My heart a pink spike.
I am a disposable animal, in exile from heaven. A bitter thing.
You must see I am attached to earth’s delights—dark red petals,
sap frothing and rising. Distant father, are you stirred also?
I see beauty on either side of heaven: here, a yellow bird;
there, pleated wings, white fire.

Unreachable father, could you possibly exist? Lies have passed
between us like tiny aphids on the trailing rose. And silence.
If I say I love you, will you lift the weight of solitude? I speak
to you on my knees, my hands an empty clump of longing.

after evening rain
dark birds fold their wings

—cento sourced from the eight “Matins” poems from The Wild Iris by Louise Glück

Barbara Sabol (she/her) lives in Akron, Ohio, close to the Cuyahoga Valley National Park, whose trails she knows by heart. She was named Ohio co-Poet of the Year for her sixth book, WATERMARK: Poems of the Great Johnstown Flood of 1889 (Alternating Current Press, 2023). Her book, IMAGINE A TOWN, won the 2019 Sheila-Na-Gig Editions Poetry Prize. Other honors include an Individual Excellence Award from the Ohio Arts Council, and the Arts Alive Outstanding Literary Artist of 2024 award. Barbara’s haiku and haibun have been published widely, and her haibun have been recognized by the Haiku Society of America, short-listed for a Touchstone Award by the Haiku Foundation in 2024, and awarded a 2025 Rachel Sutcliffe Haiku-Arts Prize. Barbara conducts workshops through Literary Cleveland and the Cuyahoga Falls Library. She earned an MFA from Spalding University. When not at her desk, Barbara is working in her garden or walking in the woods. She lives with her bird carver husband and wonder dog.

Romy Rhoads Ewing (she/her) writes from Sacramento, CA, where she was born and raised. Her work has appeared in HAD, Oyez Review, Rejection Letters, Bullshit Lit, Major 7th Magazine, and more. Her poetry chapbook please stay was published in 2024 by Bottlecap Press. Her hybrid zine, someday [everybody but] us will laugh about all of this, was briefly physically distributed at the 3rd Annual Hallow-Zine Fest and is available digitally. She also edits poetry and nonfiction for JAKE and runs the archival site SACRAMENTO DIRTBAG ARCHIVES. She can be found at romyrhoadsewing.xyz