This feature, chosen by Guest Editor Ty Raso, is from The Birth of Undoing by Emily Patterson (Sheila-Na-Gig Editions 2025).
Progesterone in Oil
This one must go into muscle.
Sometimes it brings forth blood
without warning. Propped
to one side, I press my eyes tight
as he draws viscous liquid
from a tiny vial, hands
reluctant yet steady. Afterwards,
I switch from ice to heat. Feel
the oil spread like an inner
burning. Count a heartbeat
faint as breath in my back.
Emily Patterson (she/her) is an award-winning poet and the author of The Birth of Undoing (Sheila-Na-Gig Editions, 2025), as well as three chapbooks. Her work appears in North American Review, June Road Press, SWWIM, The Penn Review, and elsewhere. In 2025, her children’s poem “Small is the Seed” was set to choral music by Katerina Gimon and premiered at Carnegie Hall (Oxford University Press). Emily lives with her family in Columbus, Ohio and works as an editor at Highlights for Children. Read more at emilypattersonpoet.com.
Ty Raso (she/they) is a trans character, poet, and teacher. Her work has shared space with POETRY, Electric Literature, The Adroit Journal, Foglifter Journal, The Offing, Black Warrior Review, and elsewhere. She feels most at home near rivers, and they were a 2023-2024 and 2025-2026 Poetry Fellow at the Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center, and a 2025 Djanikian Scholar with The Adroit Journal. Her debut full-length collection, MIRROR WOULD BE A BEAUTIFUL NAME FOR A CHILD is forthcoming with Noemi Press in October 2027. You can find her on Instagram @spaghetti_utopia.
- The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: The Birth of Undoing by Emily Patterson - October 13, 2026
- Sundress Reads: Review of my mother is a mixed metaphor - October 12, 2026
- The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: The Birth of Undoing by Emily Patterson - October 12, 2026