The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: A Concerto for an Empty Frame: Music for Survival by Elizabeth Kirkpatrick-Vrenios

This selection, chosen by Guest Editor Jacob Jardel, is from A Concerto for an Empty Frame: Music for Survival by Elizabeth Kirkpatrick-Vrenios (Kelsay Books 2023).

N(t)= N ⁰ e -𝜏 ln(2))t1/2

    Curioso

What is the half-life of sodium?
              Who cares? Just apply the formula.

What is the half-life of a refrigerator?
              The day before the warrantee expires.

What is the half-life of a rock?
              Longer than you, girl.

What is the half-life of an atom?
              No one knows. If you halve it, the world will explode.

What is the half-life of a head of hair?
              About forty years, the same as teeth, eyes, and ears.

What is the half-life of chocolate?
              Two seconds. Three if it hits the floor.

What is the half-life of a memory?
              It depends on whether or not you have a picture.

What is the half-life of love?
              Forever.

Elizabeth Kirkpatrick-Vrenios’ (she/her) award-winning chapbook, Special Delivery, was published in 2016, her second, Empty the Ocean with a Thimble in 2021, and her third, Concerto for an Empty Frame by Kelsay Books in 2023. Nominated four times for a pushcart prize, twice for Best of Net, she has poems published in numerous anthologies and journals. A Professor Emerita from American University, she has performed as a singing artist across Europe and the United States, is editor of the Writers of the Mendocino Coast Anthology, artistic director of the Redwoods Opera and a member of international Who’s Who of Musicians. Her website is Kirkpatrick-Vreniospoet.com.

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.