The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Dressing the Bear by Susan L. Leary

This selection, chosen by Guest Editor t.r. san, is from Dressing the Bear by Susan L. Leary (Trio House Press 2024).

The Professor Asks Me to Write a Joyful Poem

One without drugs or sadness
or mention of your death. One
in which you don’t beat your fists
bloody against a palm. I am
disobedient as is joy as is you,
as is the better version of the truth
that lives inside the defense. Is it more
profound to say walking towards
or walking away? Somehow, with me,
you’re always doing both: forgetting
the air mattress & your Greyhound
ticket, then forgetting to breathe.
Is forgetfulness a form of joy
or of disobedience? The day I forgot
the plunger at Ace Hardware
was the day you forgot
to put my car in park. You were fifteen,
so my fault, but as the car rolled
nearer the storefront, we laughed
through the panic because joy is you
is disobedience is me, is the weather
we last looked upon your face.
A shit storm, you’d have said,
as we ran out to the parking lot, pelted
by the sky’s sadness & with nothing
for a shield, while I was thinking
how nice it would have been
to spend a day with you in the rain.

Susan L. Leary (she/her) is the author of SENTENCE (Nine Syllables Press, fall 2026), selected by Eugenia Leigh as the winner of the Nine Syllables Press Chapbook Contest; More Flowers (Trio House Press, February 2026); and Dressing the Bear (Trio House Press, 2024), selected by Kimberly Blaeser as the winner of the Louise Bogan Award. Her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in such places as Indiana Review, North American Review, Third Coast, Cream City Review, Smartish Pace, The Arkansas International, and Verse Daily. She holds an MFA from the University of Miami and lives in Indianapolis, IN.

t.r. san is a poet and translator currently based on Gadigal land, with recent work found in minor literature[s], The Cincinnati Review, HAD, Smokelong Quarterly, The Offing, &c. read & reach @thoushallkill on Twitter, or trsan.neocities.org.