This feature, chosen by Guest Editor Catherine Garbinsky, is from Otherlight by Jill Mceldowney (YesYes Books 2023).
I WOULD SAY
I wake up still
thinking you are alive—
my body gets used to that fog
as if you, as if the dead are nothing more
than bones to the body. That pain is deep—
I will go deeper.
I stayed awake for months after you—
waiting
for your call
come back—people like you don’t just disappear.
I would’ve waited forever
in the solstice cold, up
in the air, mountainside of disbelief if only to hear you say
my name.
Before you, I could not understand pain
but I know it now and it sounds supernatural,
like beams of light
smashed across the small of my back. Sleep and never
sleep again
where did you find yourself when you finally woke?
Did it hurt—?
I mean is death anything like living?
Does it remind you of home?
I hope where you are is vast, real,
impossible—
a better oblivion,
more sky—
I hope where you are is nothing
like home.
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. 
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