The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: The New Life by Wendy Wisner

This feature, chosen by Guest Editor Merrick Sloane, is from The New Life by Wendy Wisner (Cornerstone Press 2024).

Aftern Newtown

Think of the baby
C-curved
around your body

in the dark
bedroom.

His breath.
His hair.
Don’t think

of the other rooms—
clementines

rotting on the sill,
the slowly dying
marigolds.

Don’t think
of the boy,

once a baby,
walking into a room
full of children.

See only this:
the baby’s hands

crisscrossed
in front of his eyes,
bones hollow

as a bird’s,
little fists jerking

on instinct.
Love him.
It’s dangerous

to be a baby, a child
in this world.

Glory
to the goddamn
peach fuzz on his head.

Wendy Wisner (she/her) is the author of three books of poems, most recently The New Life, published by Cornerstone Press (University of Wisconsin Stevens-Point) and named a finalist for the Foreword INDIES Book of the Year. Wendy’s poems and essays have appeared in Alaska Quarterly Review, Prairie Schooner, Spoon River Review, Passages North, Verse Daily, The Washington Post, Lilith Magazine, and elsewhere.

Merrick Sloane (they/them) is a neuro-Queer 90’s kid and nonbinary poet, editor, and researcher from Oklahoma. A Best of the Net and AWP Intro Journal Awards Winner, Merrick holds an MFA from UT, Knoxville. Merrick’s work has received support from The DreamYard Project’s Rad(ical) Poetry Consortium and Poet’s House. A 2025 Garden Party Collective Neurodivergence / Intersectionality contest winner, Merrick’s poetry also appears in citizen trans* {project}, ANMLY, Seattle Journal for Social Justice, Fruitslice, Puerto del Sol, and elsewhere. They are Associate Poetry Editor of Doubleback Review. Merrick writes so that others may feel radically loved and is deeply committed to helping create a world that liberates us all.