The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: The Night Is What It Eats by Danielle Hanson

This feature, chosen by Guest Editor EMDASH, is from The Night Is What It Eats by Danielle Hanson (Codhill Press 2026).

Seed

Everything starts with a seed; this poem, for example. I watered
and watched them every day at first—not able to tell the carrots
from the weeds until the second leaves unfold.

When we got it from the dog’s mouth, it was small, eyes closed,
unmoving on the floor but not dead, not yet. The dog was gentle
with the creature she dug out from under the dresser. What was it,
this outsider? Was it mouse, or squirrel, or rat?

The second leaves are frilled and bright green, small, delicate.
You must thin them, give them room, kill some to save the others.
You try to pick the strongest of the wisps, and trim the others with
scissors, one by one.

Visitors is what the Bible calls angels. In Sodom they were
vulnerable. Their host offers his children to the crowd, to do with
what they please. Kill some to save the others.

Soon after we pry the dog’s mouth, after we gently place the infant
in a bag, after we crush the skull with our heel, weeks later,
we see a mother squirrel carrying a folded baby over half her size
in her mouth. The child clings to her. We watch this mother
teaching this one that’s left to gather leaves from broccoli, fold
them, bunch them into cheeks to carry to safety.

It’s becoming colder at night. We shut our children’s windows
to keep out the cold, to protect. Only some of us are made to see
the Spring.

Danielle Hanson (she/her) is author of The Night Is What It Eats (Elixir Press Prize), Fraying Edge of Sky (Codhill Press Poetry Prize), and Ambushing Water (Finalist, Georgia Author of the Year), and editor of the poetry anthology Objects in This Mirror (Press 53) and a book of literary criticism. She is Marketing Director for Sundress Publications, inaugural Poet Laureate of Costa Mesa, California, and Writer-in-Residence at UC Irvine.

EMDASH a.k.a Emily Lu Gao (高璐璐) (she/they) is a poet-who-also-writes-fiction, educator, and daughter of Chinese immigrants. She writes to heal, grow, and decolonize. They’ve received support from LAMBDA, McCormack Writing Center, Sundress Publications, Bread Loaf Environmental Writers Conference, The Chinese American Museum of LA, Jersey City Arts Council and more. She has learned as much from community organizing and open mics as she did from her Rutgers-Newark MFA in Poetry. They’re published in Poetry Northwest, ANMLY, Alocasia, Underblong and elsewhere. She proudly hosted, produced, and curated The Word Bookstore Open Mic for two years.