The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: These Hollowed Bones by Amelia Díaz Ettinger

This selection, chosen by Guest Editor Jacob Jardel, is from These Hollowed Bones by Amelia Díaz Ettinger (Sea Crow Press 2024).

Winter Bird

        Ave testimonia

You have seen the leaves of autumn drop
—so, you know how my love has been
not in the tumble, but the branches

which turn their naked fingers to catch
your weight with the frost that is sure to come
the vulnerability of it makes me shudder

i see the cold in how you fluff your body
how you turn your gaze towards me
our landscapes going light and fruitless

You and i can go back
to another season, another turn
— why does it have to hurt?

You know it does—
You are the witness
to fall—to winters

Amelia Díaz Ettinger’s (she/her) poetry and short stories have been published in anthologies, literary magazines, and periodicals. She is the author of two chapbooks and four books of poetry. She has an MS in Biology and MFA in creative writing. Her literary work is a marriage of science and her experience as an immigrant.

Jacob Jardel (he/they) is a CHamoru writer, scholar, and educator born in Guåhan (Guam), raised in California and Oklahoma, and currently based in Kansas City. He’s currently pursuing a doctoral degree in Humanities with a focus in English at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. A former Editor for The Sosland Journal and The Central Dissent, his work has appeared in The 580 Mixtapes Vol. 1, Fanachu’s Voices of the Diaspora zine, and No. 1 Magazine. He is also a member of the Garden Party Collective, through which he published his poetry chapbook Full-Blooded CHamaole in 2024. Online, Jacob lives at his website itsjacobj.com, on Instagram and Threads @itsjacobj, and sometimes on BlueSky @itsjacobj.bsky.social. Offline, he lives with his partner, his cat, and his ever-growing board game and Magic the Gathering collection.