Category: Wardrobe Best Dressed

The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Bad Animal by Kathryn Bratt-Pfotenhauer

This selection, chosen by Managing Editor Krista Cox, is from Bad Animal by Kathryn Bratt-Pfotenhauer (Riot in your Throat Press 2023).

Self-Portrait as Moirologist

It’s my job to mourn. To wear black
like my father wore black, to stalk and bawl
behind a hearse as it makes its slow crawl
towards the cemetery. And when I watched
the crows gather, they watched me too.
We stood there, observing each other as around us,
a clique of corpses was laid to rest. And when one bird
fell from the line in a burst of electricity and feathers, I ran
to catch it. Paid the rest of the murder no mind
as they surrounded their dead friend and cawed,
pecked my hands when I got too close. Everyone
mourns differently. Some are the carrion birds and some
are carrion, the difference barely palpable. I cannot shake
the feeling I will die soon. In the incredible inky
darkness of night, I am holding a man to my chest, hoping
he doesn’t wake to a body. I am holding a bird in my hands
and watching it die.

Kathryn Bratt-Pfotenhauer is the author of the poetry collection Bad Animal (Riot in Your Throat, 2023) and the chapbook Small Geometries (Ethel, 2023). The recipient of a Pushcart Prize, her poetry has been published in The Missouri Review, The Adroit Journal, and others. Her fiction has been published/is forthcoming in Giving Room Magazine and The Masters Review. She is a graduate of Syracuse University’s MFA program in Poetry and is a doctoral student in Comparative Literature at New York University.


Krista Cox is Managing Editor of The Wardrobe, Doubleback Review, and Sundress Publications. She is growing her hair out again and reclaiming her childhood dreams.


The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Bad Animal by Kathryn Bratt-Pfotenhauer

This selection, chosen by Managing Editor Krista Cox, is from Bad Animal by Kathryn Bratt-Pfotenhauer (Riot in your Throat Press 2023).

content warning for animal death

Prayer

Like this, the dead elk was deposited onto the tarp:
rain crowned its antlers, the scruff under

its neck glistened with dew. In murder, as in living,
the animal sound was paramount, the death-cry, the orgasm,

how we communicated we were in danger, or pleasure. I heard
nature cry out that day. What it meant, I still don’t know. The birds

lifted from the trees, an eyelid fluttering open.
The trees shuddered their leaves against the blood spatter.

I was younger then. I knew nothing of death except my father
wielding the rifle, then the knife. My hand gently patted

the elk’s dead, dead flank as my father grabbed a handful
of its hair and held it steady, began to cut. I thought I was

comforting it, or maybe I was comforting myself.
Nothing will be wasted this way, I thought. Nothing left.

Silence in the car as we drove home, the elk in the backseat,
blood pooling in its two tusked ivory teeth. I have the luxury

of writing about this violence in hypotheticals. We never
killed the elk. We never opened the animal from sternum

to groin to see what organs lay beneath; we were never
that fascinated with our own bodies, their sounds. The elk was dead

when we got there. The blood already seeped into the soil.
Tiny animals already made their homes in the bones. Eyes

had become less than eyes. A cluster of maggots peered through the flesh
shyly, like girls around a velvet curtain at a ballet recital.

We didn’t know what to do with ourselves, or the body, so we left it
there. I could say something about nature taking itself back. I could

say something about the murder. Here it is:
nothing was wasted, nothing was left. But—

in the center of its forehead,
a bullet nestled like a small child.

Kathryn Bratt-Pfotenhauer is the author of the poetry collection Bad Animal (Riot in Your Throat, 2023) and the chapbook Small Geometries (Ethel, 2023). The recipient of a Pushcart Prize, her poetry has been published in The Missouri Review, The Adroit Journal, and others. Her fiction has been published/is forthcoming in Giving Room Magazine and The Masters Review. She is a graduate of Syracuse University’s MFA program in Poetry and is a doctoral student in Comparative Literature at New York University.


Krista Cox is Managing Editor of The Wardrobe, Doubleback Review, and Sundress Publications. She is growing her hair out again and reclaiming her childhood dreams.


The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: My Family Was Like a Russian Novel by Carla Sarett

This selection, chosen by Managing Editor Krista Cox, is from My Family Was Like a Russian Novel by Carla Sarett (Plan B Press 2023).

Notes from the Underground

Brother lives in a special school, its name is unspeakable. No one is dying. At night, we listen as
Mother shuffles furniture around and peels off the wallpaper. Sofas and chairs turn fickle, they aban-
don us, imposters take their place. Sometimes there is food. I peel a single tangerine and build a tan-
gerine trail though the house. We’re beggars here, I tell Little Sister. She accepts her precious segment.
She can make it last for years.

Carla Sarett is a poet and novelist based in San Francisco. Her poetry books include She Has Visions (Main Street Rag Press, 2022) and two chapbooks, Woman on the Run (Alien Buddha Press, 2023) and My Family Was Like a Russian Novel (Plan B Press, 2023). Her work has been nominated for the Pushcart, Best of Net and Best American Essays. Carla has a PhD from University of Pennsylvania.


Krista Cox is Managing Editor of The Wardrobe, Doubleback Review, and Sundress Publications. She is growing her hair out again and reclaiming her childhood dreams.


The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: My Family Was Like a Russian Novel by Carla Sarett

This selection, chosen by Managing Editor Krista Cox, is from My Family Was Like a Russian Novel by Carla Sarett (Plan B Press 2023).

Tiny Grandmothers

Dante ascended to his Beatrice.
I prefer my version of heaven.
We all do, I suppose.

I can’t have too many tiny grandmothers
in mine. A sweet multitude
of heavy coats and velvet hats.

Always waving from Fort Tryon’s
shadows, they’re weighed down
by loaves of dark bread and butter.

Their pocketbooks filled with silver-
wrapped Hershey’s kisses, rolls of cherry
red Lifesavers, they never forget.

I take their wrinkled kitchen hands.
We form a perfect circle. We wheel around
again and again and again.

We say the names of every murdered sister.
Those names, they move the sun.

Carla Sarett is a poet and novelist based in San Francisco. Her poetry books include She Has Visions (Main Street Rag Press, 2022) and two chapbooks, Woman on the Run (Alien Buddha Press, 2023) and My Family Was Like a Russian Novel (Plan B Press, 2023). Her work has been nominated for the Pushcart, Best of Net and Best American Essays. Carla has a PhD from University of Pennsylvania.


Krista Cox is Managing Editor of The Wardrobe, Doubleback Review, and Sundress Publications. She is growing her hair out again and reclaiming her childhood dreams.


The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: My Family Was Like a Russian Novel by Carla Sarett

This selection, chosen by Managing Editor Krista Cox, is from My Family Was Like a Russian Novel by Carla Sarett (Plan B Press 2023).

Thin Cover

When I am away, my older brother sleeps
in my bed, he hides under my thin covers.
He no longer goes to school, boys attack him there.

I shut my white door,
and leave him sheltered.

I enter his room. Every book is in order, dusted, inviolate.
I lie in his bed and I pray to the god my father mocks.
I pray until I run out of prayer.

Carla Sarett is a poet and novelist based in San Francisco. Her poetry books include She Has Visions (Main Street Rag Press, 2022) and two chapbooks, Woman on the Run (Alien Buddha Press, 2023) and My Family Was Like a Russian Novel (Plan B Press, 2023). Her work has been nominated for the Pushcart, Best of Net and Best American Essays. Carla has a PhD from University of Pennsylvania.


Krista Cox is Managing Editor of The Wardrobe, Doubleback Review, and Sundress Publications. She is growing her hair out again and reclaiming her childhood dreams.


The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: My Family Was Like a Russian Novel by Carla Sarett

This selection, chosen by Managing Editor Krista Cox, is from My Family Was Like a Russian Novel by Carla Sarett (Plan B Press 2023).

The Nest

On a screen sky-wide, the guns
roared and handsome Anthony Quinn
fought smoky battles in a foreign land,
an island perhaps, but not Long Island.
And a woman, too, my mother said
she was up to no good. Maybe

there were bright stars and ocean,
but all I saw were rows of station
wagons and dads carrying popcorn.
My big brother and I, in soft pajamas,
matched as Superman and Supergirl,
in the rear of our white Oldsmobile,

back seats down. We ate movie candy,
glowing colored Dots, forbidden save for
movie-days and drive-in nights.
As we got sugar-sleepy, my father
leaned over to kiss my young mother,
beautiful as movie stars.

Back then, they still danced together.
My dark-eyed brother, my god
he was sweet, smiled and I thought,
this must be heaven—the four of us
in our shining white station wagon,
with all the other cars and families.

                               The war was far away.

Carla Sarett is a poet and novelist based in San Francisco. Her poetry books include She Has Visions (Main Street Rag Press, 2022) and two chapbooks, Woman on the Run (Alien Buddha Press, 2023) and My Family Was Like a Russian Novel (Plan B Press, 2023). Her work has been nominated for the Pushcart, Best of Net and Best American Essays. Carla has a PhD from University of Pennsylvania.


Krista Cox is Managing Editor of The Wardrobe, Doubleback Review, and Sundress Publications. She is growing her hair out again and reclaiming her childhood dreams.


The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: My Family Was Like a Russian Novel by Carla Sarett

This selection, chosen by Managing Editor Krista Cox, is from My Family Was Like a Russian Novel by Carla Sarett (Plan B Press 2023).

My Family Was Like a Russian Novel, Everyone Says

We woke exhausted. All temperatures were unbearable. In rain, doors were locked, we never owned keys. When
Mother cooked, flames arose from the antique stove, we showered salt to calm them and ate burnt meats. As consolation,
we drank vats of cocoa while Mother read Pride and Prejudice and Brother slept with his unnamed cat and
Father lost all of his money. Mother took to her closet after a doctor shouted she’d murdered Brother…a lie but not
entirely untrue. Father strayed and of course returned to find Truth. There were rare tumors. Dead, Brother appeared
at Mother’s deathbed. I knew you’d come my darling, she sighed, how long can anyone stay away?

Carla Sarett is a poet and novelist based in San Francisco. Her poetry books include She Has Visions (Main Street Rag Press, 2022) and two chapbooks, Woman on the Run (Alien Buddha Press, 2023) and My Family Was Like a Russian Novel (Plan B Press, 2023). Her work has been nominated for the Pushcart, Best of Net and Best American Essays. Carla has a PhD from University of Pennsylvania.


Krista Cox is Managing Editor of The Wardrobe, Doubleback Review, and Sundress Publications. She is growing her hair out again and reclaiming her childhood dreams.


The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: How to Cut a Woman in Half by Janis Harrington

This selection, chosen by Managing Editor Krista Cox, is from How to Cut a Woman in Half by Janis Harrington (Able Muse Press 2022).

A Month Passes, Half of Another

Nurses and interns dodge my questions, tell me
to catch the chief neurologist on rounds. Timing
never right—my job, our toddler—I cannot camp
beside you. I track down the oracle whose words
might save us, find him at his desk, eating
a peach, no white jacket over polo and khakis.
He is astonished I still harbor hope.

Fully clothed, coat and shoes, I lie on the bed
we shared as a swath of sunlight inches
across me, its warmth withdrawing like a blanket
slipping off. A neighbor knocks, the phone rings
and rings, friends urging me to pick up. Eyes shut,
I hear but cannot respond or stir, suspended
like you, darling, between living and not.

Janis Harrington is the author of How to Cut a Woman in Half (Able Muse Press, 2022), a Finalist for the Able Muse Book Award. Her first collection, Waiting for the Hurricane, was awarded the Lena Shull Book Award by the North Carolina Poetry Society. A Pushcart and Best of the Net nominee, she won the 2023 James Applewhite Poetry Contest. Her work has appeared in Tar River Poetry, Journal of the American Medical Association, North Carolina Literary Review and elsewhere. She lives in North Carolina where she co-hosts a monthly reading series for a local independent bookstore.

Krista Cox is Managing Editor of The Wardrobe, Doubleback Review, and Sundress Publications. She is growing her hair out again and reclaiming her childhood dreams.


The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: How to Cut a Woman in Half by Janis Harrington

This selection, chosen by Managing Editor Krista Cox, is from How to Cut a Woman in Half by Janis Harrington (Able Muse Press 2022).

On Strike

Remember, Annie, when Miss Jones shamed you
for wet pants and you boycotted school.
Every morning, book bag on your shoulder,
you kissed Mom, left with us, ducked into the shed,
hid with rakes and shovels, a stray cat for company.
We reported you sick. Jacket and mittens on,
you traced upper- and lowercase letters,
sounded out the words of easy readers,
your breath frosted white, finally
opened your lunchbox when you thought it was noon
(no milk or recess). You watched for our return
and joined us, red-cheeked, truant, proud.
Be yourself at six, defiant, determined—
grief is a bully. Fight back. Don’t give in.

Janis Harrington is the author of How to Cut a Woman in Half (Able Muse Press, 2022), a Finalist for the Able Muse Book Award. Her first collection, Waiting for the Hurricane, was awarded the Lena Shull Book Award by the North Carolina Poetry Society. A Pushcart and Best of the Net nominee, she won the 2023 James Applewhite Poetry Contest. Her work has appeared in Tar River Poetry, Journal of the American Medical Association, North Carolina Literary Review and elsewhere. She lives in North Carolina where she co-hosts a monthly reading series for a local independent bookstore.

Krista Cox is Managing Editor of The Wardrobe, Doubleback Review, and Sundress Publications. She is growing her hair out again and reclaiming her childhood dreams.


The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: How to Cut a Woman in Half by Janis Harrington

This selection, chosen by Managing Editor Krista Cox, is from How to Cut a Woman in Half by Janis Harrington (Able Muse Press 2022).

Hospital Vigil

While doctors operate, striving to save Pete’s life,
I walk a windowless corridor—no clocks,
surely past midnight—find the neurosurgery
waiting room, open the door and stop,
ambushed by aromas of Sunday dinner.
A family eats, rosary beads slid wordlessly,
chairs and loveseats pulled around a table
spread with fried chicken in a bucket,
quarts of slaw, baked beans, mashed potatoes.
Plastic cutlery and napkins sealed in packets
like surgical instruments. A stranger offers me
a paper plate, bland as a communion wafer,
inviting me to sit down with them, break
bread, pray this picnic won’t become a wake.

Janis Harrington is the author of How to Cut a Woman in Half (Able Muse Press, 2022), a Finalist for the Able Muse Book Award. Her first collection, Waiting for the Hurricane, was awarded the Lena Shull Book Award by the North Carolina Poetry Society. A Pushcart and Best of the Net nominee, she won the 2023 James Applewhite Poetry Contest. Her work has appeared in Tar River Poetry, Journal of the American Medical Association, North Carolina Literary Review and elsewhere. She lives in North Carolina where she co-hosts a monthly reading series for a local independent bookstore.

Krista Cox is Managing Editor of The Wardrobe, Doubleback Review, and Sundress Publications. She is growing her hair out again and reclaiming her childhood dreams.