Category: Wardrobe Best Dressed

The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Iguana Iguana by Caylin Capra-Thomas

This selection, chosen by guest editor Alyse Bensel, is from Iguana Iguana by Caylin Capra-Thomas, released by Deep Vellum in 2022.

Twister

I always want to start with, it wasn’t—it wasn’t
this, but this. It wasn’t like that. The girl,
not the gown. The gall, not the girl.
It wasn’t so bad. It wasn’t like that. The past,
not the moment. The tongue, not the twister.
The orange, not the pith, the oblivion,
not the forgotten thing. It was green,
but not like tarnished copper. It was green,
like light underwater. Like water with light
going through it: green, like the algae, not
the water, like the thing between her teeth,
not the back tooth in need of a root canal.
How do I show you? No, not you—you?
The web, not the spider, the twister, not her
farmhouse dinner. Green light, green sky.
The acid, not the rain. The moon, not
the lunatic river. I wasn’t like that. I’m not
what you’re thinking. Green light, baby.
Not me, not the gone thing, glinting.

Caylin Capra-Thomas is the author of Iguana Iguana (Deep Vellum), as well as the chapbook Inside My Electric City (YesYes Books), and her poems and nonfiction have appeared in venues like Pleiades, Copper Nickel, New England Review, 32 Poems, Mississippi Review, and elsewhere. The recipient of fellowships and residencies from the Vermont Studio Center, the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, and the Studios of Key West, she was the 2018-2020 poet-in-residence at Idyllwild Arts Academy. She lives in Columbia, Missouri, where she studies nonfiction, poetry, and ecocriticism in Mizzou’s PhD program, but she calls New England home.

Alyse Bensel is the author of Rare Wondrous Things: A Poetic Biography of Maria Sibylla Merian (Green Writers Press, 2020) and three chapbooks. Her poems and essays have appeared or are forthcoming in Alaska Quarterly Review, Cream City Review, South Dakota Review, and West Branch. She serves as Poetry Editor for Cherry Tree and teaches at Brevard College, where she directs the Looking Glass Rock Writers’ Conference. 

The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Iguana Iguana by Caylin Capra-Thomas

This selection, chosen by guest editor Alyse Bensel, is from Iguana Iguana by Caylin Capra-Thomas, released by Deep Vellum in 2022.

Iguana Iguana

Key West

Things crawl over me here, no-see-ums and biting
ants. They make me feel hospitable, like at last
I am a good host. Stop itching, I tell myself,
we have guests. What is a guest if not something
that takes a little bit of your life? In the cemetery
where I practice pedaling, sailing circles around
the dead, iguanas sun bake and scurry the white
slabs, the green length of them defiant drapery
in death’s pale parlor. I’m told they’re invasive—
even their taxonomy, iguana iguana, it’s too much,
too many iguanas, the William Carlos Williams
of reptiles, or the man my mother loved after
my father, Jim James, who chugged caffeine-free
Diet Pepsi and made his pecs dance, recited
the three words of Italian he learned from Sylvester
Stallone (Ti amo and andiamo). He once argued
with me over my stubborn belief that ten thousand
was the same thing as one million. I was never good
with numbers. He was never good with kids.
He built things and made my mother laugh. Maybe
too much. Maybe for the wrong reasons. During cold
snaps, the iguanas freeze and fall like stoned fruit
from the trees, wake only once their core
has warmed. I won’t be here to see it—it’s the off-
season now, August, everything dank and hot-
-blooded, which is what I think my mother
liked about Jim: something raw about him,
the pink scars where his own mother’s
boyfriend stubbed out cigarettes on his arms
or how he called Here kitty kitty nightly
into the dark after the cat ran away.
She was a stray to begin with—we lured her
into our lives with milk, named her Fitty Fat
the Kitty Kat, let her eat and fuck and kill
as much as she wanted, litters of kittens
and kibble and dead birds piling up.
What else is there to say but everything
we’ve said before, over and again? Iguana iguana.
Italian Stallion. Here, kitty kitty. Andiamo,
Jim James. What is a child if not something
that takes a little bit of your life? He wasn’t
a bad man. He made my mother laugh.

Caylin Capra-Thomas is the author of Iguana Iguana (Deep Vellum), as well as the chapbook Inside My Electric City (YesYes Books), and her poems and nonfiction have appeared in venues like Pleiades, Copper Nickel, New England Review, 32 Poems, Mississippi Review, and elsewhere. The recipient of fellowships and residencies from the Vermont Studio Center, the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, and the Studios of Key West, she was the 2018-2020 poet-in-residence at Idyllwild Arts Academy. She lives in Columbia, Missouri, where she studies nonfiction, poetry, and ecocriticism in Mizzou’s PhD program, but she calls New England home.

Alyse Bensel is the author of Rare Wondrous Things: A Poetic Biography of Maria Sibylla Merian (Green Writers Press, 2020) and three chapbooks. Her poems and essays have appeared or are forthcoming in Alaska Quarterly Review, Cream City Review, South Dakota Review, and West Branch. She serves as Poetry Editor for Cherry Tree and teaches at Brevard College, where she directs the Looking Glass Rock Writers’ Conference. 

The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Iguana Iguana by Caylin Capra-Thomas

This selection, chosen by guest editor Alyse Bensel, is from Iguana Iguana by Caylin Capra-Thomas, released by Deep Vellum in 2022.

Put All That Down Now. Back Away.

Forgive.

Forgive the days their relentless arrival. Accept
their storms as your prophets,

their waters’ soft violence.
Forgive the water. Forgive

the clouds their roaming forms.
In another version, oblivion

came for you—more than a passing
notion. Forgive her.

You, you can learn to move on.
See—overhead, the migration:

sandhill cranes spiraling up, up—
harsh, rolling gargle of calls

crowns the color of rusted blood,
and knife-sharp whitish wings, glinting.

Forgive them. They waste you.

Caylin Capra-Thomas is the author of Iguana Iguana (Deep Vellum), as well as the chapbook Inside My Electric City (YesYes Books), and her poems and nonfiction have appeared in venues like Pleiades, Copper Nickel, New England Review, 32 Poems, Mississippi Review, and elsewhere. The recipient of fellowships and residencies from the Vermont Studio Center, the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, and the Studios of Key West, she was the 2018-2020 poet-in-residence at Idyllwild Arts Academy. She lives in Columbia, Missouri, where she studies nonfiction, poetry, and ecocriticism in Mizzou’s PhD program, but she calls New England home.

Alyse Bensel is the author of Rare Wondrous Things: A Poetic Biography of Maria Sibylla Merian (Green Writers Press, 2020) and three chapbooks. Her poems and essays have appeared or are forthcoming in Alaska Quarterly Review, Cream City Review, South Dakota Review, and West Branch. She serves as Poetry Editor for Cherry Tree and teaches at Brevard College, where she directs the Looking Glass Rock Writers’ Conference. 

The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Iguana Iguana by Caylin Capra-Thomas

This selection, chosen by guest editor Alyse Bensel, is from Iguana Iguana by Caylin Capra-Thomas, released by Deep Vellum in 2022.

Crosscut

So many girls are trying to tell you this:
the line between the hurt body and the body

that hurts is razor-thin and traversable
like the trail we carved into the mountain

to climb beyond the snow line and slip off.
Pain, the happening. Pain, the procedure.

Firewood is not the tree’s submission
but the consequence of being rooted.

One place will cut you down. Girls,
this is not forever. We are not forever,

but we will forever have been here.
Clear-eyed and cross-legged

in the crosscut clearing. Plain-toothed.
Champion-toothed. The woodsman

who walks the forest whistles grateful
tunes to tall specters who arrive

only in the shape of absence, apparition
of light on the needled ground

which once knew only shadow.

Caylin Capra-Thomas is the author of Iguana Iguana (Deep Vellum), as well as the chapbook Inside My Electric City (YesYes Books), and her poems and nonfiction have appeared in venues like Pleiades, Copper Nickel, New England Review, 32 Poems, Mississippi Review, and elsewhere. The recipient of fellowships and residencies from the Vermont Studio Center, the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, and the Studios of Key West, she was the 2018-2020 poet-in-residence at Idyllwild Arts Academy. She lives in Columbia, Missouri, where she studies nonfiction, poetry, and ecocriticism in Mizzou’s PhD program, but she calls New England home.

Alyse Bensel is the author of Rare Wondrous Things: A Poetic Biography of Maria Sibylla Merian (Green Writers Press, 2020) and three chapbooks. Her poems and essays have appeared or are forthcoming in Alaska Quarterly Review, Cream City Review, South Dakota Review, and West Branch. She serves as Poetry Editor for Cherry Tree and teaches at Brevard College, where she directs the Looking Glass Rock Writers’ Conference. 

The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Iguana Iguana by Caylin Capra-Thomas

This selection, chosen by guest editor Alyse Bensel, is from Iguana Iguana by Caylin Capra-Thomas, released by Deep Vellum in 2022.

Passage

It’s hard to tell what will be important. The river
is high again and so are the teenagers encrusting
its edges, beady-eyed and black-clad, sideways
glancing, suspicious as crows. Each in the cluster
a dead version of yourself: one scratching peace
signs into the dirt with her toe. One singing
ugly. One poking a drowned worm, expressionless.
And you stand apart, head cocked, remembering
that the French for to happen also means to arrive,
that sometimes we say deceased when we mean
departed. The obscure chorus of your own life
keeps cawing into the diamond dark, under the roaring
of each body you inhabit, the waters, the others
you’ve flocked to, even when all you can hear
are your own hard swallows, or the sweet shriek
of those far-off trains you suspect are coming
to claim you. To lay open the hills you haven’t seen.

Caylin Capra-Thomas is the author of Iguana Iguana (Deep Vellum), as well as the chapbook Inside My Electric City (YesYes Books), and her poems and nonfiction have appeared in venues like Pleiades, Copper Nickel, New England Review, 32 Poems, Mississippi Review, and elsewhere. The recipient of fellowships and residencies from the Vermont Studio Center, the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, and the Studios of Key West, she was the 2018-2020 poet-in-residence at Idyllwild Arts Academy. She lives in Columbia, Missouri, where she studies nonfiction, poetry, and ecocriticism in Mizzou’s PhD program, but she calls New England home.

Alyse Bensel is the author of Rare Wondrous Things: A Poetic Biography of Maria Sibylla Merian (Green Writers Press, 2020) and three chapbooks. Her poems and essays have appeared or are forthcoming in Alaska Quarterly Review, Cream City Review, South Dakota Review, and West Branch. She serves as Poetry Editor for Cherry Tree and teaches at Brevard College, where she directs the Looking Glass Rock Writers’ Conference. 

The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Faraway Places by Teow Lim Goh

This selection, chosen by guest editor Alyse Bensel, is from Faraway Places by Teow Lim Goh, released by Diode Editions in 2022.

Petals

after Jay DeFeo

Nude, you stand before the painting
you will sculpt for another
seven years — your eyes are closed,

your feet apart, your arms spread
like wings about to rise. Rays that you
will chisel into petals

blaze from your body at
the center of a star, the beginnings
of a rose breaking forth —

Teow Lim Goh is the author of two poetry collections, Islanders (2016) and Faraway Places (2021), and an essay collection Western Journeys (2022). Her essays, poetry, and criticism have been featured in The Georgia Review, Beloit Poetry Journal, Los Angeles Review of Books, PBS NewsHour, and The New Yorker.

Alyse Bensel is the author of Rare Wondrous Things: A Poetic Biography of Maria Sibylla Merian (Green Writers Press, 2020) and three chapbooks. Her poems and essays have appeared or are forthcoming in Alaska Quarterly Review, Cream City Review, South Dakota Review, and West Branch. She serves as Poetry Editor for Cherry Tree and teaches at Brevard College, where she directs the Looking Glass Rock Writers’ Conference. 

The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Faraway Places by Teow Lim Goh

This selection, chosen by guest editor Alyse Bensel, is from Faraway Places by Teow Lim Goh, released by Diode Editions in 2022.

Autobiography

And we will not remember everything.
We invent to fill the gaps, to make a story
with which we can live.

We invent: this is who I am.

Teow Lim Goh is the author of two poetry collections, Islanders (2016) and Faraway Places (2021), and an essay collection Western Journeys (2022). Her essays, poetry, and criticism have been featured in The Georgia Review, Beloit Poetry Journal, Los Angeles Review of Books, PBS NewsHour, and The New Yorker.

Alyse Bensel is the author of Rare Wondrous Things: A Poetic Biography of Maria Sibylla Merian (Green Writers Press, 2020) and three chapbooks. Her poems and essays have appeared or are forthcoming in Alaska Quarterly Review, Cream City Review, South Dakota Review, and West Branch. She serves as Poetry Editor for Cherry Tree and teaches at Brevard College, where she directs the Looking Glass Rock Writers’ Conference. 

The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Faraway Places by Teow Lim Goh

This selection, chosen by guest editor Alyse Bensel, is from Faraway Places by Teow Lim Goh, released by Diode Editions in 2022.

Butterfly Pavilion

I stand before the cocoons, waiting
for a twitch in the shells, a crack revealing
a colorful wing. There are none.

The cocoons are pinned
to cork boards, each dangling
from its tip, ordered
by species and country of origin.

Some look like snails.
Some look like tiny black bugs.
Some are the green of the first leaves of spring.

Nothing today.

I turn to the butterflies
around me, broken
out of their shells, dotting the forest
with their bright colors.

They flit from flowers to leaves, pause
on branches, their legs arched,
their wings folded. Once

they lift their wings, they launch into flight.

Teow Lim Goh is the author of two poetry collections, Islanders (2016) and Faraway Places (2021), and an essay collection Western Journeys (2022). Her essays, poetry, and criticism have been featured in The Georgia Review, Beloit Poetry Journal, Los Angeles Review of Books, PBS NewsHour, and The New Yorker.

Alyse Bensel is the author of Rare Wondrous Things: A Poetic Biography of Maria Sibylla Merian (Green Writers Press, 2020) and three chapbooks. Her poems and essays have appeared or are forthcoming in Alaska Quarterly Review, Cream City Review, South Dakota Review, and West Branch. She serves as Poetry Editor for Cherry Tree and teaches at Brevard College, where she directs the Looking Glass Rock Writers’ Conference. 

The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Faraway Places by Teow Lim Goh

This selection, chosen by guest editor Alyse Bensel, is from Faraway Places by Teow Lim Goh, released by Diode Editions in 2022.

Island

Before I was born, the sea rolled up
to my grandparents’ house, but the view
I knew was the strip of asphalt

beyond the barbed wire. The garden
was overgrown with mango, guava,
and jackfruit we picked ripe

off the branches, the sole rambutan
that could not bear fruit, the coconut
decaying from within. I caught

butterflies. I flicked my wrist, pressed
their small brown wings. They left
skeins of powder on my fingers. Then

I let them go. I imagined the sea
rose and flooded the garden. The coconut
fell and bobbed in the waves, too dry

and hard to eat, the shell broken
only by a knife.

Teow Lim Goh is the author of two poetry collections, Islanders (2016) and Faraway Places (2021), and an essay collection Western Journeys (2022). Her essays, poetry, and criticism have been featured in The Georgia Review, Beloit Poetry Journal, Los Angeles Review of Books, PBS NewsHour, and The New Yorker.

Alyse Bensel is the author of Rare Wondrous Things: A Poetic Biography of Maria Sibylla Merian (Green Writers Press, 2020) and three chapbooks. Her poems and essays have appeared or are forthcoming in Alaska Quarterly Review, Cream City Review, South Dakota Review, and West Branch. She serves as Poetry Editor for Cherry Tree and teaches at Brevard College, where she directs the Looking Glass Rock Writers’ Conference. 

The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Faraway Places by Teow Lim Goh

This selection, chosen by guest editor Alyse Bensel, is from Faraway Places by Teow Lim Goh, released by Diode Editions in 2022.

Faraway Places

Desire makes us face ourselves. The selves
we keep at bay want to break out of our bodies.

I wonder if the saying that women cannot read maps is meant
to keep us from venturing out on our own.

Maps are guides to our dreams,
where we want to go and who we want to be.

I heard a crack that sounded
like a thunderbolt, but it was not the sky.

Dust blows in the wind to faraway places, washed
out to sea and rolled back to shore.

Maps hold the stories of our lives, a record
of journeys into the unknown.

I leave it for the waves to reclaim, the sand to fill,
the hole I make in my wake.

Teow Lim Goh is the author of two poetry collections, Islanders (2016) and Faraway Places (2021), and an essay collection Western Journeys (2022). Her essays, poetry, and criticism have been featured in The Georgia Review, Beloit Poetry Journal, Los Angeles Review of Books, PBS NewsHour, and The New Yorker.

Alyse Bensel is the author of Rare Wondrous Things: A Poetic Biography of Maria Sibylla Merian (Green Writers Press, 2020) and three chapbooks. Her poems and essays have appeared or are forthcoming in Alaska Quarterly Review, Cream City Review, South Dakota Review, and West Branch. She serves as Poetry Editor for Cherry Tree and teaches at Brevard College, where she directs the Looking Glass Rock Writers’ Conference.