The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: my lost womb still sings to me by Jane Ayres

This selection, chosen by guest editor Layla Lenhardt, is from my lost womb still sings to me by Jane Ayres (Porkbelly Press 2023).

forget-me-not

she’s losing her mind
they say
as if it’s like mislaying an odd sock
or a favourite dress
careless

but it isn’t lost
just working differently
dismembered patterns
glittering sequences
fractured constellations

I’m still here, you know

UK-based neurodivergent writer Jane Ayres rediscovered poetry studying for a part-time Creative Writing MA at the University of Kent, which she completed in 2019 at the age of 57. In 2020, she was longlisted for the Rebecca Swift Foundation Women Poets’ Prize and in 2021, she was shortlisted for the Aesthetica Creative Writing Award and a winner of the Laurence Sterne Prize. Her first collection edi b le was published by Beir Bua Press (July 2022). Her micro-chapbook my lost womb still sings to me was published by Porkbelly Press in October 2023. Her poetry has appeared in over 100 publications and can be heard on Eat the Storms, Upload, Blue Door to the Cosmos, O Bhéal and Medway River Lit.

Layla Lenhardt is the author of the full-length poetry collection Mother Tongue (Main Street Rag 2023). She is an alumna of the Firefly Farms Residency and a member of the Sundress Reader Board. She is currently working on her second full length poetry collection Little Spoon, and she is an MFA candidate at IU.

The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Never Picked First for Playtime by Dustin Brookshire

This selection, chosen by guest editor john compton, is from Never Picked First for Playtime by Dustin Brookshire (Small Harbor Publishing 2023).

Limited Edition “Good Bones” Barbie

after Maggie Smith’s “Good Bones”

Life isn’t short when you’re plastic.
It takes a thousand years to decompose.
Mattel tells Barbie:
Think of all the delicious ways you’ll live,
collecting centuries like charms on a bracelet.
Mattel keeps the truth from Barbie:
For every Barbie that is loved,
kept safe, passed down
generation to generation,
there is a Barbie melted
on a stove top, decapitated
by an older brother,
mauled by the family dog,
or forgotten on a playground.
Like any business seeking profit,
Mattel says what is needed
to keep the Barbie smile,
smiling: You are famous,
a name more recognizable
than Cher, Oprah, Madonna.
Millions of little girls want to be you.
They’ll grow up to be women
who keep you on a shelf,
a shrine, a deity to worship.
Mattel never discloses—
even those people
sell Barbie on eBay
when the price is right.

Dustin Brookshire’s (he/him) fourth chapbook, Repeat As Needed, is forthcoming from Harbor Editions in May 2025. A recipient of the 2024 Jon Tribble Editors Fellowship awarded by Poetry at the Sea, his work has been published or is forthcoming in the Best American Poetry Blog, Pleiades, Five Points, Cherry Tree, South Florida Poetry Journal, TAB, Whale Road Review, and other journals. He’s the editor of When I Was Straight: A Tribute to Maureen Seaton (Harbor Anthologies, 2024) and the co-editor of Let Me Say This: A Dolly Parton Poetry Anthology (Madville Publishing, 2023). Dustin curates and hosts the Wild & Precious Life Series. He lives in Asheville with his partner and cat Jude Paw. More at dustinbrookshire.com.

john compton (b. 1987) is a gay poet who lives in kentucky with his husband josh and their dogs, cats and mice. his latest full length book is my husband holds my hand because i may drift away & be lost forever in the vortex of a crowded store published with Flowersong Press (dec 2024); his latest chapbook is melancholy arcadia published with Harbor Editions (april 2024).

The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Never Picked First for Playtime by Dustin Brookshire

This selection, chosen by guest editor john compton, is from Never Picked First for Playtime by Dustin Brookshire (Small Harbor Publishing 2023).

Barbie’s Realization

after Margaret Atwood

You fit onto me
Like a shoe onto a foot

A mini pink stiletto heel
A gnawed right foot

The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Never Picked First for Playtime by Dustin Brookshire

This selection, chosen by guest editor john compton, is from Never Picked First for Playtime by Dustin Brookshire (Small Harbor Publishing 2023).

content warning for HIV and discrimination

HIV Barbie

Barbie doesn’t understand why Cuba & Belize
require HIV testing for visitors staying
longer than 3 months. Her celebrity status
may not help her in Egypt,
non-nationals with HIV may be deported.
Aruba won’t grant work permits to anyone positive.
Barbie gripes to Ken:
Who wants to go to Cuba?
Belize! Well, what do they have to offer?
The pyramids aren’t all that,
and I can do a photo shoot on any damn beach!

Barbie can’t comprehend the fuss.
She doesn’t worry about bleeding cuts
or scrapes or sharing needles.
(Just say no to drugs, Barbie shrugs.)
She doesn’t even have blood
nor openings for necessity or pleasure.
No orifice means none—ask Ken,
that fact often makes him blue.

Her box comes with an information sheet
dispelling HIV transmission myths:
It’s safe to comb Barbie’s hair.
It’s safe to take a bath with Barbie.
Meds are not included.
Barbie wipes her forehead.
How would she take the pills anyway?

Mattel never placed her in circulation.
Tucked away deep in a Mattel closet,
Infectious Disease Doctor Ken takes care of her,
though her body will never age.
She doesn’t have to worry about routine blood work
or telling friends, family, or fans she’s positive.
They’d only ask how she contracted HIV.

The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Never Picked First for Playtime by Dustin Brookshire

This selection, chosen by guest editor john compton, is from Never Picked First for Playtime by Dustin Brookshire (Small Harbor Publishing 2023).

content warning for homophobia

Homophobic Barbie

She didn’t picket when marriage equality passed,
only asked, How do you know who the bride is?
When SCOTUS ruled on workplace discrimination,
she was silent on Facebook, but asked Ken,
Do people really get fired for being gay?
Homophobic Barbie will tell you
she’s had an owner or two turn gay.
(Technically, it was her owner’s brothers.)
She knew one was gay when he made Q-tips
into hair rollers. The other
instigated arguments between her and Ken.
Ken had never questioned why he wasn’t allowed
to drive the Barbie Convertible across the living room.
Homophobic Barbie loves the sinner, hates the sin.
She isn’t sure two dads or two moms
create the best environment for a child
but shows up for the wedding.
She isn’t missing an open bar
or chance to do the Electric Slide
in pink heels with her sister Skipper.
After her third glass of champagne,
Homophobic Barbie explains to Skipper,
Remember, in the beginning,
Mattel created Barbie and Ken, not Ben and Ken.

The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Never Picked First for Playtime by Dustin Brookshire

This selection, chosen by guest editor john compton, is from Never Picked First for Playtime by Dustin Brookshire (Small Harbor Publishing 2023).

Pandemic Barbie

after Denise Duhamel’s “Antichrist Barbie”

She sits inside her Barbie Malibu Dreamhouse—
a socialite waiting on her assistant.
Her body yearns to be dressed
by little girls, but especially those little boys
who bring the glitz and glamour.
Mothers debate—let the dolls sit for 2 to 3 days
post play date or wipe them down with Lysol.
Barbie doesn’t have COVID, cry little girls,
and little boys, who in secret, love her.
The boys grow up to cinch their waists,
sissy their walk, balk at lace front wigs,
leave families behind, free their inner Barbie,
grow up to be men thankful
one blue pill a day prevents at least one virus.

The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Scavenger by Jessica Lynn Suchon

This selection, chosen by guest editor john compton, is from Scavenger by Jessica Lynn Suchon (YesYes Books 2024).

Equinox

Somewhere in Illinois, our names are carved in stone.
                                My muscles remember it—the seizing of skin
as I clutched a small knife and shredded the earth’s bone
                beneath the steel blade. Tell me there was reason for this,
                                that he, too, thought something so simple could save us.
Warmed by new sun, the frozen lake splintered open.

Winter uncurled its cold fists. Snow blackened
into the dead grass as we buried
the memory of our bodies in the wet footpaths.

Please, let me love this memory, just this one.
Let me recall the way the bluffs swallowed us whole,
the way we realized how small we were, how brief—
a scattered shadow, a freckle on his arm.

Jessica Lynn Suchon is the author of Scavenger, winner of the 2018 Vinyl 45 Chapbook Contest from YesYes Books. She completed her MFA at Southern Illinois University where she received honors from the Academy of American Poets. Her work was featured in Best New Poets 2021 and was awarded fellowships from Aspen Words and Tennessee Playwrights Studio. Jessica’s poems have appeared in Copper Nickel, Willow Springs, Ninth Letter, Yemassee, The Pinch, Muzzle Magazine, and RHINO Poetry, among others. Her debut stage play Shopgirls premiered at the Dark Horse Theater Chapel in Nashville as part of the 2019 Tennessee Playwright Festival. Jessica’s librettos have debuted internationally in performances by EKMELES Vocal Ensemble, the Eureka Ensemble, and the Albany Symphony, among others. She currently lives in Philadelphia with her husband Josh and sweet pup Gracie.

The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Scavenger by Jessica Lynn Suchon

This selection, chosen by guest editor john compton, is from Scavenger by Jessica Lynn Suchon (YesYes Books 2024).

content warning for animal death, domestic violence and feticide

An Unkindness

Scavengers found the doe before us, but we find
                what is left—bloated stomach pulled so tight
the skin split
                like the seam of a leather canteen. Intestines,
still spotted pink in the dark rotten, slip
into snow. The stink of old blood and mold
rise into the chill. A viscera stitched together with lace-
webbed sinew.
                I barely recognize the heart,
a muscle like any other.
I can’t look away. The doe’s mouth: unhinged
steel trap. The neck bone snapped and curved
back like a ceramic bowl. He and I stand still over the body. Afraid
                it means never being able to leave him,

I do not tell him I’m pregnant.
I know the next time I make him angry,

he will kill the baby.
I want him to.

The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Scavenger by Jessica Lynn Suchon

This selection, chosen by guest editor john compton, is from Scavenger by Jessica Lynn Suchon (YesYes Books 2024).

content warning for child abuse and domestic violence

Meditation as He Fractures My Collarbone

It is hard to imagine him as a small boy on his mattress
                in the garage, pressing bruises with his thumb
                                as he says a prayer for each unbroken
rib and still-hinged socket. His body making myths
                of his father, building him up brick by brick,
                                the way young boys do when a jaw
is too splintered to form forgiveness. It is hard to imagine
                the walls he was thrown into, drywall gritted
                                between his teeth. It is hard to imagine
I’m the first woman he loved with his palm pressed
                to her throat, skin plum-dark, capillaries like shattered
                                cathedral glass. I imagined it: his mother
framing family photos, wanting something to cover the shadows
                her husband knuckled into the walls. She must have prayed
                                for a better son, knew he would remember this
and never crack even one fragile thing. At some point, he stopped
                and held me, said that he did not know how to love anything.
                                But he did, and chose not to, and did not apologize.

The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Scavenger by Jessica Lynn Suchon

This selection, chosen by guest editor john compton, is from Scavenger by Jessica Lynn Suchon (YesYes Books 2024).

content warning for rape

Tetra —

When I wake he is already inside of me.

A voice comes from my mouth,
not mine, a brass pricked cylinder

music box rotating into yes. Summer hums
humid air through the crack in our wall.
Quiet under the weight of his body, I find

                                                                a water stain on the ceiling, imagine
                                                                each damp spot is a cluster of stars
                                                                and name the constellation. I know
                                                                this shape: a beast with its mouth curdled open.

Category: Wardrobe Best Dressed

The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: my lost womb still sings to me by Jane Ayres

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The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Never Picked First for Playtime by Dustin Brookshire

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The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Scavenger by Jessica Lynn Suchon

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