The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Noctuary by C. Rees

This feature, chosen by Guest Editor Catherine Garbinsky, is from Noctuary by C. Rees (Host Publications 2026).

Augury

as the dogwoods told,

                                   a living cousin grew so hungry
                                   he sold his porno magazines and shotgun and collector’s items
                                   his Nintendo and his cheap clothes and still his hunger fumed
                                   he turned on smaller cousins and wolfed them

                 there was fleeing                                 there was chase
                 chaste descriptions of both
                 cousin in the dog in the woods
                 ran so fast its eyes ignited mad stars in its skull
                 body stretched like grip seeking
                 trees blurred boundaries until
                 there was no difference

a curse courses through this family
for trespass     for living
for no other reason than the rain is pissed
                                          and decides it so

our ravening family’s great-gray-fogbank-miasma sealing us below
                                the driven-under farmer’s field
                                we fall and pool
                                            tease stagnant waters from the water table
                              breed new winged bodies keening for old bloo
our specters never miss a feast         the arras forever torn to reveal

the slaughtered grandfathers spilled like a pot-roast on dirty tiles
the hanged moon
the McMansion’s too-legible portent
foundation licked by housefire
our witness speechless             doused               in carnage            like butter

C. Rees (they/them) is a queer poet and bookseller whose work contends with contamination and complicity, emergent ecologies, hauntings, and porousness. Their first poetry collection, NOCTUARY, will be published by Host Publications in 2026. C. was raised in Pennsylvania and New Jersey, Lenni-Lenape land, and currently lives in Austin, TX, on Comanche, Lipan Apache, Coahuiltecan, Tonkawa, and Jumanos land. They hold an MFA in Poetry from the New Writers Project at UT Austin. They are ideologically and materially committed to a free Palestine.

Catherine Garbinsky (she/they) is a writer living in Knoxville, Tennessee. They received their MFA in Poetry from the University of Tennessee-Knoxville, where they are now a PhD candidate. Catherine’s poems have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. She has written two chapbooks: All Spells Are Strong Here (Ghost City Press, 2018) and Even Curses End (Animal Heart Press, 2019), and her work has been featured in Yes Poetry, Coffin Bell Journal, Cream City Review, and elsewhere.