Category: Wardrobe Best Dressed

The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: All Water Has Perfect Memory by Nada Samih-Rotondo

This feature, chosen by Guest Editor EMDASH, is an excerpt from All Water Has Perfect Memory by Nada Samih-Rotondo (Jaded Ibis Press 2023).

                     LEARNING TO SWIM

                                  The water, All of the time

    Tayali,  Binti  the  waters  whisper.  Come, my  daughter.
    I  teach  my  children  to  respect  the water;  never fear it.
One moment, you might be jumping waves in a comfortable



rhythm and in the next, a fierce wave could drag you under,
take you off guard.
    “Don’t  fear   hitting  the  bottom,”  I  tell  them.  “It  gives
you something to propel from.”

                                                    …

    Yalla,  Tayali, Yafa’s waters  call. I feel her urgent tugging
in the tides of my body, my limbs  inching  toward  the shore
like a magnet.
    Soon, I tell her. I’ll be back soon.

Nada (she/her) is a multi-genre Palestinian writer, educator, and mother deeply attuned to her adopted land’s stories. A refugee English language learner, Nada grew up deeply impacted by family separation and state violence both in Palestine and on Narragansett land or so called Rhode Island. As a working class caretaker, Nada aims to create innovative, anti-imperialist works of literature that play at the intersections of the more than human world, expands imaginations, illuminates connections between land and body, and inspires joyful resistance. Her writing has appeared in Masters Review, Gulf Stream Literary Magazine, and others. All Water Has Perfect Memory, a multigenerational hybrid memoir, is her first book.

Photo Credit: Juan Camillo Garza

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.


The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: All Water Has Perfect Memory by Nada Samih-Rotondo

This feature, chosen by Guest Editor EMDASH, is an excerpt from All Water Has Perfect Memory by Nada Samih-Rotondo (Jaded Ibis Press 2023).

                              NEW WORLD

                               Johnston, Rhode Island 2001

    My full  name  is Nada  Tayser  Mohamed-Samih  Jaber,  I
wanted to scream. How many white people have a  name like
that?
    Later,  I  attended  that  professor’s  office  hours to  hand in
the final assignment.
    “Oh,  I wanted to tell  you,” she said  excitedly,  “I  teach this
same  class  at   Providence  College, and a  group  of  students
there said the same thing as you. They are from Egypt. I guess
you’re not white after  all,”  she  concluded, beaming  with  the
arrogance of discovering land long settled.

Nada (she/her) is a multi-genre Palestinian writer, educator, and mother deeply attuned to her adopted land’s stories. A refugee English language learner, Nada grew up deeply impacted by family separation and state violence both in Palestine and on Narragansett land or so called Rhode Island. As a working class caretaker, Nada aims to create innovative, anti-imperialist works of literature that play at the intersections of the more than human world, expands imaginations, illuminates connections between land and body, and inspires joyful resistance. Her writing has appeared in Masters Review, Gulf Stream Literary Magazine, and others. All Water Has Perfect Memory, a multigenerational hybrid memoir, is her first book.

Photo Credit: Juan Camillo Garza

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.


The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: All Water Has Perfect Memory by Nada Samih-Rotondo

This feature, chosen by Guest Editor EMDASH, is an excerpt from All Water Has Perfect Memory by Nada Samih-Rotondo (Jaded Ibis Press 2023).

                              COLORATURA

                                 Johnston, Rhode Island 2002

    Some of us  need to parent  ourselves,  I’d often  tell  myself.
I  fixed my  face into  the  picture  of  perfect   composure,  and
pretended I didn’t know what I was capable of. A good actress.

Nada (she/her) is a multi-genre Palestinian writer, educator, and mother deeply attuned to her adopted land’s stories. A refugee English language learner, Nada grew up deeply impacted by family separation and state violence both in Palestine and on Narragansett land or so called Rhode Island. As a working class caretaker, Nada aims to create innovative, anti-imperialist works of literature that play at the intersections of the more than human world, expands imaginations, illuminates connections between land and body, and inspires joyful resistance. Her writing has appeared in Masters Review, Gulf Stream Literary Magazine, and others. All Water Has Perfect Memory, a multigenerational hybrid memoir, is her first book.

Photo Credit: Juan Camillo Garza

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.


The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: All Water Has Perfect Memory by Nada Samih-Rotondo

This feature, chosen by Guest Editor EMDASH, is an excerpt from All Water Has Perfect Memory by Nada Samih-Rotondo (Jaded Ibis Press 2023).

                            SILENT PERIOD

                                          Rhode Island, 1990

    My  body  is drawn to bodies of water. I was born  in Kuwait
City,  minutes  from  the  shores of  the  Persian  Gulf.  For  six
summers I waded in the waters of the Persian  Gulf,  the same
waters  my grandfather  fished after leaving Palestine to settle
in  Kuwait.  He had  a boat he would take  out in  the  morning
with  his  brothers, returning in the  evening with piles of slip-
pery fish. My grandmother gutted, cleaned, dressed, and fried
or  roasted  this  gift  from  the sea for the family.  My  mother
and  her  siblings  were  born  and  raised  along  those shores,
but  were  never  granted  Kuwaiti  citizenship: a coveted prize
rarely   awarded  to descendants  of  the Palestinian  diaspora.
Nevertheless,  Kuwait  was home  to  my  family,  as  it  was  to
400,000 other Palestinians.
    At  age  six I ended up  in the  United  States,  specifically  in
Rhode  Island,  aptly  nicknamed  the  Ocean  State.  I’ve spent
the  last thirty years  inhaling the salty  Atlantic, the tips of my
fingers pruned, my curly hair matted and waterlogged. I  grew
up   wide-eyed  and  feral,  stomping  along  muddy riverbanks
barely  recovered  from  industrial  ravage.  But  it was  always
the  Mediterranean—the  turquoise  shores  of  Yafa—that  my
blood ebbed toward.

Nada (she/her) is a multi-genre Palestinian writer, educator, and mother deeply attuned to her adopted land’s stories. A refugee English language learner, Nada grew up deeply impacted by family separation and state violence both in Palestine and on Narragansett land or so called Rhode Island. As a working class caretaker, Nada aims to create innovative, anti-imperialist works of literature that play at the intersections of the more than human world, expands imaginations, illuminates connections between land and body, and inspires joyful resistance. Her writing has appeared in Masters Review, Gulf Stream Literary Magazine, and others. All Water Has Perfect Memory, a multigenerational hybrid memoir, is her first book.

Photo Credit: Juan Camillo Garza

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.


The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: All Water Has Perfect Memory by Nada Samih-Rotondo

This feature, chosen by Guest Editor EMDASH, is an excerpt from All Water Has Perfect Memory by Nada Samih-Rotondo (Jaded Ibis Press 2023).

                                    MERCY

                                        Yafa, Palestine 1920

Til-yat-ruh-he is an Arabic phrase meaning “my soul rose up,”
describing  an  experience  so  troubling  that your soul almost
leaves   your  body.  I’ve heard  my  mother  say  til-yat-ruh-he
when referencing something being strenuous, painful, or even
boring  if  she  was  being  ironic. I also heard her describe her
experience of birthing me this way.

Nada (she/her) is a multi-genre Palestinian writer, educator, and mother deeply attuned to her adopted land’s stories. A refugee English language learner, Nada grew up deeply impacted by family separation and state violence both in Palestine and on Narragansett land or so called Rhode Island. As a working class caretaker, Nada aims to create innovative, anti-imperialist works of literature that play at the intersections of the more than human world, expands imaginations, illuminates connections between land and body, and inspires joyful resistance. Her writing has appeared in Masters Review, Gulf Stream Literary Magazine, and others. All Water Has Perfect Memory, a multigenerational hybrid memoir, is her first book.

Photo Credit: Juan Camillo Garza

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.


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).

St Barnabas in the Afterlife

Heaven is just a storage locker for ghosts with no one to haunt.
I spend my days wringing out the laundry of my flesh, airing it
like a braid of garlic from the ceiling. My martyrdom
requires upkeep—patching and darning, and always
the slipping of the parts of me that haven’t yet let go.

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.

Photo Credit: Juan Camillo Garza

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.


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.

Photo Credit: Juan Camillo Garza

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.


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).

Aphorisms for Lips

One lip is the reflection of the other.

Two lips are a rose.

Lips attack in pairs. He should never have approached them.

Lips are tongue-tamers.

Lips try to learn from the teeth how to bite.

Lips spread like honey across her face.

He studied her lips but forgot how to read.

Two lips eloped.

Lips ran to the ears with the news.

Two feral lips peeked out from the beard.

A lip is a trap for pray.

He went to the very lip of her lip and fell in.

Lips cushioned his fall.

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.

Photo Credit: Juan Camillo Garza

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.


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).

Thunder

Sometimes night wakes up
in the middle of day.

The memory of warm breath on ear’s spiral.
Like a voice whispering thunder,

and then thunder.
Electricity hovering like a kite

casting a shadow,
slice of night blown circling.

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.

Photo Credit: Juan Camillo Garza

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.


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).

Aphorisms for the Eyes

An eye is a jellyfish caught from the see.

A glass eye is like a fake accent.

An eye is the most fragile thing you can’t drop.

A goddess decorating a tree with eyes.

The eyes will always have it.

A tear is the fruit of the eye.

How does one look for a lost eye?

An eye is a target.

There are two eyes in I.

The lashes are the gates of the eyes.

Not only cloudy eyes produce rain.

He was sentenced to a thousand eyelashes.

He asked for a thousand more.

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.

Photo Credit: Juan Camillo Garza

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.