The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Otherlight by Jill Mceldowney

This feature, chosen by Guest Editor Catherine Garbinsky, is from Otherlight by Jill Mceldowney (YesYes Books 2023).

TELEPHONE

I am beginning to view the body as a well I could shout Hello Hello into
call it a mistake hang up out of alarm because tell me what you thought
you were doing answering when you’ve been dead five whole years? And is
it really you? How have you kept alive? What have you grown down
there in the gloom of after like salt? Perhaps I should say mine the body
is a salt mine And I never call but you answer anyway Was it ever
cheerful? The sound called ringing Don’t talk to me please
don’t tell me I need you disoriented buried alive clawing your way
up from the mouth of a cave to show me the way home and tell me what
does this even mean?

Tell me to spread open my palms cut another deck of cards face up these
lines arch me far from home I cannot stop from coming my fate are
you what brings me here my annihilating angel? Everyone knows that
when you die you learn everything so tell me about my life Tell me
about my sun line my one day call me bitch I love that hands-on
unmaking and making I must impossibly bloom forth that tallest mountain
I dial the dead and you answer Hand me the telephone give me your ice
your hour of starving your naked promise me I will die dark haired
and one day you and I will burn buildings together for warmth Speak to
me Tell me about me I want to be believed

Jill Mceldowney (she/her) is the author of the full-length collections Alydar (YesYes Books, forthcoming 2026) and Otherlight (YesYes Books 2023), winner of a North American Book Award. She is found and editor of Madhouse Press. She is a recipient of a grant from the Helene Wurlitzer Foundation of New Mexico. Her previously published word can be found in publications such as The Academy of American Poets, Prairie Schooner, Tupelo Quarterly, Frontier, Muzzle, and other notable publications.

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.