This feature, chosen by Guest Editor Ezra Fox, is from Wolves in Shells by Kimberly Ann Priest (The University of Arkansas Press 2025).
Taxonomy
There is a way to say a name in the present
that changes the way you say that name in its future,
like the way my own name
and my mother’s name
became both blessing and curse
in the mouths of the men that spoke them.
When I first left my home
two years after divorcing my husband,
two years before my son’s graduation,
and three years before my daughter wrote the poems
that would break me,
I said my daughter’s name to the breeze,
then my son’s name while standing by a river
in New Hampshire feeling finally free, not feeling
the names like blessing or curse,
or anything so weighty. Only
their inscription in the earth of the journey that carried me,
as if I was sure they could hear me,
as if to declare: Mother is alive. Follow.
As if I didn’t know I was leaving.
As if I really thought they’d come running behind,
waving their arms with joy.
Kimberly Ann Priest (she/her) is a writer and photographer whose book Wolves in Shells won the 2024 Backwaters Prize in Poetry from the University of Nebraska Press. She is also the author of tether & lung (Texas Review Press) and Slaughter the One Bird (Sundress Publications). An assistant professor in the Department of Writing, Rhetoric, and Cultures at Michigan State University, her poetry has appeared in Copper Nickel, Poetry Wales, and Chicago Quarterly Review.
Ezra Fox (they/he) is a Best of the Net nominee who lives and writes in San Francisco, CA and holds an MFA from Indiana University. A Breadloaf, Tin House, and Lambda Literary Fellow, and recipient of the Lili Elbe Memorial Scholarship, which recognizes transgender writers of exceptional promise, their work appears or is forthcoming in TriQuarterly, The Pinch, Fourteen Hills, Interim, and elsewhere. Additionally, they won the 2025 West Trade Review Poetry Prize, and currently serve as assistant judge of the Tom Howard/Margaret Reid Poetry Contest. Apart from writing, Ezra maintains a daily practice of reconnecting with their inner child: roller-skating, playing drums, and enjoying animated films and theme parks. In quieter moments, they can be found sharing cups of tea and sweet treats with their beloveds. Learn more about Ezra at ezrafox.net or on Instagram @ezraxfox.
