The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Everything Has Been Moved, Even the Dead by Jen Siraganian

This feature, chosen by Guest Editor Ty Raso, is from Everything Has Been Moved, Even the Dead by Jen Siraganian (Perugia Press 2026).

WALKING INTO ST. JAMES CATHEDRAL
AS IF WE WERE ALREADY GHOSTS

Armenian Quarter, Jerusalem

inside mosaics chant // lanterns half-tip from
silver chains // incense lifts tin // a crowned
Jesus blackened from smoke // gold reflects
gold // a bearded priest tells my father // to
uncross his legs // we leave before the final
prayer // snake along walls of peeled gray //
a square of olive trees // the cemetery door
rusted and locked // a half-asleep priest sits
nearby, his legs spread to a V // he says the
cemetery guard is away // my father points
to me and pleads // a tarnished key unveiled
// a white dog follows us // his nose tasting
sky // we can’t find my grandparents’ graves //
too many gravestones layered with shattered
platters // rows of black crosses // vines heavy
with rotten grapes and chips of porcelain //
weeds splinter stone // everything has been
moved // even the dead

Jen Siraganian (she/her) is an Armenian-American writer, educator, and former poet laureate of Los Gatos, California. Her poetry has appeared in AGNI, Best New Poets 2016 and 2025, The Cincinnati Review, Electric Literature, Poetry Daily, Prairie Schooner, The Rumpus, the anthology Heaven Looks Like Us: Palestinian Poetry, and elsewhere, and she is a winner of the New Ohio Review Poetry Prize and The Writing Salon’s Jane Underwood Poetry Prize. She served as managing director of Litquake: San Francisco’s Literary Festival, and she is a Lucas Artist Fellow at the Montalvo Arts Center in Saratoga, California.

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.