The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Her Kind by Cindy Veach


This selection, chosen by guest editor Katie Manning, is from 
Her Kind by Cindy Veach, released by CavanKerry Press in 2021.

Practice the Spell: Divorce

Load a tumbler
with ice to the brim.
Spank those fat rectangles
from your grandmother’s pastel-colored ice tray—

where her fingers stuck, so too should yours.
Add tap water until it fills the gaps
between each cube—
take it as cold as it can come

and still pass down your throat.
Repeat after me:
“Please hurt my teeth. Leak into the places
where the enamel is weak. Hurt me.”

Eight eight-ounce glasses every day
until your heart goes numb
until you can stand in front of him
and say that cold word cold.

Cindy Veach is the author of Her Kind (CavanKerry Press) a finalist for the 2022 Eric Hoffer Montaigne Medal and an IPPY Silver Medalist in poetry, Gloved Against Blood (CavanKerry Press), a finalist for the Paterson Poetry Prize and a Massachusetts Center for the Book ‘Must Read,’ and the chapbook, Innocents (Nixes Mate). Her poems have appeared in the Academy of American Poets Poem-a-Day, AGNI, Michigan Quarterly Review, Poet Lore, North American Review, Salamander and elsewhereCindy is the recipient of the Philip Booth Poetry Prize and the Samuel Allen Washington Prize. She is poetry co-editor of MER.

Katie Manning is the author of Hereverent (Agape Editions), Tasty Other (winner of the Main Street Rag Poetry Book Award), and six chapbook collections, including How to Play (Louisiana Literature Press) and 28,065 Nights (River Glass Books). Her poem “What to Expect” was featured on the Poetry Unbound podcast, and her poems have appeared in HAD, Poet Lore, SWWIM, Stirring, Thimble, Verse Daily, and many other venues. Katie is the founder and editor-in-chief of Whale Road Review and a professor of writing at Point Loma Nazarene University.

The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Her Kind by Cindy Veach


This selection, chosen by guest editor Katie Manning, is from 
Her Kind by Cindy Veach, released by CavanKerry Press in 2021.

I, Kikimora

The spider first classified
the year I wed—

spider smaller than a speck
of straw, spider of the bog

of swamp, wetland, marsh, quagmire.
A mere wisp of khaki chaff, of hair,

a sphinx moth, night butterfly, invisible
wraith who slips through the keyhole

after dark—both beautiful and ugly,
whiny, glass half-empty noisemaker,

dish breaker, home-wrecker—
wet footprints across his heart.

Cindy Veach is the author of Her Kind (CavanKerry Press) a finalist for the 2022 Eric Hoffer Montaigne Medal and an IPPY Silver Medalist in poetry, Gloved Against Blood (CavanKerry Press), a finalist for the Paterson Poetry Prize and a Massachusetts Center for the Book ‘Must Read,’ and the chapbook, Innocents (Nixes Mate). Her poems have appeared in the Academy of American Poets Poem-a-Day, AGNI, Michigan Quarterly Review, Poet Lore, North American Review, Salamander and elsewhereCindy is the recipient of the Philip Booth Poetry Prize and the Samuel Allen Washington Prize. She is poetry co-editor of MER.

Katie Manning is the author of Hereverent (Agape Editions), Tasty Other (winner of the Main Street Rag Poetry Book Award), and six chapbook collections, including How to Play (Louisiana Literature Press) and 28,065 Nights (River Glass Books). Her poem “What to Expect” was featured on the Poetry Unbound podcast, and her poems have appeared in HAD, Poet Lore, SWWIM, Stirring, Thimble, Verse Daily, and many other venues. Katie is the founder and editor-in-chief of Whale Road Review and a professor of writing at Point Loma Nazarene University.

The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Her Kind by Cindy Veach


This selection, chosen by guest editor Katie Manning, is from 
Her Kind by Cindy Veach, released by CavanKerry Press in 2021.

Woman Climbs Statue of Liberty in Protest

Therese Patricia Okoumou, Guilty of Trespassing, 2018

She said, I climb to protest our nation’s “zero
tolerance” immigration policy. She said, I climb
to abolish ICE. They said, trespasser. They said,
disorderly conduct. When she sat on the skirts
of Lady Liberty, we watched them climb
after her. They said, get down. Our hero
said, I’m not discouraged. She made her bed.
And we watched and cheered and put a curse
on those who wanted to arrest her
for protesting putting children into cages.
Oh yes, we witches watched her carry our truth
up and over that ledge like a beautiful sooth-
sayer, strong and lithe. Goodbye Dark Ages.
We climb with her. We climb with her.

Cindy Veach is the author of Her Kind (CavanKerry Press) a finalist for the 2022 Eric Hoffer Montaigne Medal and an IPPY Silver Medalist in poetry, Gloved Against Blood (CavanKerry Press), a finalist for the Paterson Poetry Prize and a Massachusetts Center for the Book ‘Must Read,’ and the chapbook, Innocents (Nixes Mate). Her poems have appeared in the Academy of American Poets Poem-a-Day, AGNI, Michigan Quarterly Review, Poet Lore, North American Review, Salamander and elsewhereCindy is the recipient of the Philip Booth Poetry Prize and the Samuel Allen Washington Prize. She is poetry co-editor of MER.

Katie Manning is the author of Hereverent (Agape Editions), Tasty Other (winner of the Main Street Rag Poetry Book Award), and six chapbook collections, including How to Play (Louisiana Literature Press) and 28,065 Nights (River Glass Books). Her poem “What to Expect” was featured on the Poetry Unbound podcast, and her poems have appeared in HAD, Poet Lore, SWWIM, Stirring, Thimble, Verse Daily, and many other venues. Katie is the founder and editor-in-chief of Whale Road Review and a professor of writing at Point Loma Nazarene University.

The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Her Kind by Cindy Veach


This selection, chosen by guest editor Katie Manning, is from 
Her Kind by Cindy Veach, released by CavanKerry Press in 2021.

I, Witch

So what if I woke up changed it’s not like I’m a wild hog 
or some Evill thing          not a Reall hog 
that follows you home         Jumps into the window 
a Munky with Cocks feete w’th Claws       don’t believe 
what my Accuser says       or believe it
the fact is       my divorce attorney’s building
sits on the site of the prison    where they kept the Accused 
in Chaines      in 1692      I came there with a silk scarf 
worn loosely    at the neck    borders looped 
with colored thread     he came   with daisies   dark
chocolate      and proclaimed 
my wife came towards me and found fault with me 
downstairs   in the dungeon   they chained us to the walls 
to keep our spirits from escaping    in the Liknes of a bird

Cindy Veach is the author of Her Kind (CavanKerry Press) a finalist for the 2022 Eric Hoffer Montaigne Medal and an IPPY Silver Medalist in poetry, Gloved Against Blood (CavanKerry Press), a finalist for the Paterson Poetry Prize and a Massachusetts Center for the Book ‘Must Read,’ and the chapbook, Innocents (Nixes Mate). Her poems have appeared in the Academy of American Poets Poem-a-Day, AGNI, Michigan Quarterly Review, Poet Lore, North American Review, Salamander and elsewhereCindy is the recipient of the Philip Booth Poetry Prize and the Samuel Allen Washington Prize. She is poetry co-editor of MER.

Katie Manning is the author of Hereverent (Agape Editions), Tasty Other (winner of the Main Street Rag Poetry Book Award), and six chapbook collections, including How to Play (Louisiana Literature Press) and 28,065 Nights (River Glass Books). Her poem “What to Expect” was featured on the Poetry Unbound podcast, and her poems have appeared in HAD, Poet Lore, SWWIM, Stirring, Thimble, Verse Daily, and many other venues. Katie is the founder and editor-in-chief of Whale Road Review and a professor of writing at Point Loma Nazarene University.

The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Not Flowers by Noreen Ocampo


This selection, chosen by guest editor Katie Manning, is from 
Not Flowers by Noreen Ocampo, released by Variant Lit in 2022.

litmus test

Would you buy flowers
for yourself? Can you

tell me all the people who would?
The people who have?

Are you looking forward to what comes next?
Can you visualize

yourself there? Where are you
standing? How

are your knees? How does it feel to dial
your memorized numbers?

What do you say
when they pick up?

Do you trust your luck? If I tell you
luck was never a part of it,

what then? Are you
translating people’s faces with kindness?

How afraid are you of their teeth?
How afraid are you of yours?

Noreen Ocampo is a Filipino American writer and poet from metro Atlanta. Her collection Not Flowers won the 2021 Variant Lit Microchap Contest, and her work can also be found in Palette PoetrySundog Lit, and Depth Cues, among others. She holds a BA in English from Emory University and currently studies poetry in the MFA program at The University of Mississippi, where she is working to document and elevate stories of Filipino Americans in the Deep South.

Katie Manning is the author of Hereverent (Agape Editions), Tasty Other (winner of the Main Street Rag Poetry Book Award), and six chapbook collections, including How to Play (Louisiana Literature Press) and 28,065 Nights (River Glass Books). Her poem “What to Expect” was featured on the Poetry Unbound podcast, and her poems have appeared in HAD, Poet Lore, SWWIM, Stirring, Thimble, Verse Daily, and many other venues. Katie is the founder and editor-in-chief of Whale Road Review and a professor of writing at Point Loma Nazarene University.

The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Not Flowers by Noreen Ocampo


This selection, chosen by guest editor Katie Manning, is from 
Not Flowers by Noreen Ocampo, released by Variant Lit in 2022.

crane game

I would fit in seamlessly in the belly of any claw machine
swelling with plush toys. Imagine: me & the duck with
the very pink cheeks & the pillow-shaped corgi that’s all
hear—wouldn’t we be grand, the three of us & our eighty-
six closest friends? Softness would be the most desirable
way to lack, the way we would slip through silver &
cushion each other’s tumbles. We would only have to say
goodbye once a year at most, & if the time really came, we
would celebrate that our friend was going home to
someone with steady hands & conviction.

Noreen Ocampo is a Filipino American writer and poet from metro Atlanta. Her collection Not Flowers won the 2021 Variant Lit Microchap Contest, and her work can also be found in Palette PoetrySundog Lit, and Depth Cues, among others. She holds a BA in English from Emory University and currently studies poetry in the MFA program at The University of Mississippi, where she is working to document and elevate stories of Filipino Americans in the Deep South.

Katie Manning is the author of Hereverent (Agape Editions), Tasty Other (winner of the Main Street Rag Poetry Book Award), and six chapbook collections, including How to Play (Louisiana Literature Press) and 28,065 Nights (River Glass Books). Her poem “What to Expect” was featured on the Poetry Unbound podcast, and her poems have appeared in HAD, Poet Lore, SWWIM, Stirring, Thimble, Verse Daily, and many other venues. Katie is the founder and editor-in-chief of Whale Road Review and a professor of writing at Point Loma Nazarene University.

The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Not Flowers by Noreen Ocampo


This selection, chosen by guest editor Katie Manning, is from 
Not Flowers by Noreen Ocampo, released by Variant Lit in 2022.

In which I am cast in a Studio Ghibli film

I am drawn in a side character’s uncertain lines, cursed
with flimsy ankles & tipping over. I still bike to school

because I have to, because Mom & Pop are running
a florist-bakery-café combination. I smell like burnt butter

& coffee beans, which makes everyone forget that we also
sell flowers. I am seventeen & having a quarter-life crisis

that only pays me in my best friend’s exasperation
as he sits in front of me in class. He sighs like he practices

the puff of his chest in the mirror & is drawn with
the charisma of a main character whose clothes are always

suspiciously crisp. I have been in love with him my whole life.
But he’s stuck in a love triangle with the class president

& the news co-anchor whose teeth literally twinkle
when she smiles, so I’m surprised when he bikes home

with me. One day, he tells me he’s set on moving oceans
away after graduation & I pause in the middle of the street

because there are only twenty-three minutes until the credits roll
& I’m not sure how we’ll patch this up in time. He laughs,

sparkling with cherry blossoms & afternoon light, &
for a moment, we’re more than a collection of penciled-in lines.

Noreen Ocampo is a Filipino American writer and poet from metro Atlanta. Her collection Not Flowers won the 2021 Variant Lit Microchap Contest, and her work can also be found in Palette PoetrySundog Lit, and Depth Cues, among others. She holds a BA in English from Emory University and currently studies poetry in the MFA program at The University of Mississippi, where she is working to document and elevate stories of Filipino Americans in the Deep South.

Katie Manning is the author of Hereverent (Agape Editions), Tasty Other (winner of the Main Street Rag Poetry Book Award), and six chapbook collections, including How to Play (Louisiana Literature Press) and 28,065 Nights (River Glass Books). Her poem “What to Expect” was featured on the Poetry Unbound podcast, and her poems have appeared in HAD, Poet Lore, SWWIM, Stirring, Thimble, Verse Daily, and many other venues. Katie is the founder and editor-in-chief of Whale Road Review and a professor of writing at Point Loma Nazarene University.

The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Not Flowers by Noreen Ocampo


This selection, chosen by guest editor Katie Manning, is from 
Not Flowers by Noreen Ocampo, released by Variant Lit in 2022.

Kitchen

There’s sliced cheese in the fridge,
underneath the avocados I’ll forget about.

You can make sandwiches
until you’re tired & you don’t have to ask

how many you’re allowed.
I want you to be like me. I want

you to have reasons to live. Maybe two
of those reasons are sandwiches

& cheese. Maybe our people
are watching from heaven & horrified,

or watching from the living room
& disappointed, but

we can also boil elbows al dente
& grate a block of whatever else is hiding

in the fridge. & maybe old-style mustard,
maybe peas. Third & fourth reasons.

Maybe we weren’t meant to
be making mac & cheese fancy, or at all

& that’s why it doesn’t
turn out right. Or maybe my gaze

over your shoulder is what’s curdling
the sauce & I should step back

& trust that you know
what color the flame should be.

Noreen Ocampo is a Filipino American writer and poet from metro Atlanta. Her collection Not Flowers won the 2021 Variant Lit Microchap Contest, and her work can also be found in Palette PoetrySundog Lit, and Depth Cues, among others. She holds a BA in English from Emory University and currently studies poetry in the MFA program at The University of Mississippi, where she is working to document and elevate stories of Filipino Americans in the Deep South.

Katie Manning is the author of Hereverent (Agape Editions), Tasty Other (winner of the Main Street Rag Poetry Book Award), and six chapbook collections, including How to Play (Louisiana Literature Press) and 28,065 Nights (River Glass Books). Her poem “What to Expect” was featured on the Poetry Unbound podcast, and her poems have appeared in HAD, Poet Lore, SWWIM, Stirring, Thimble, Verse Daily, and many other venues. Katie is the founder and editor-in-chief of Whale Road Review and a professor of writing at Point Loma Nazarene University.

The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Not Flowers by Noreen Ocampo


This selection, chosen by guest editor Katie Manning, is from 
Not Flowers by Noreen Ocampo, released by Variant Lit in 2022.

Peachtree

                   SUWANEE, GEORGIA

I miss our old backyard & the way everything grew
into everything / my father’s terracotta bricks in careful
arches / seeping into the earth / the trees whispering /
in forbidden corners of the wood / the patch where the
ghost-playground was / if you looked hard enough /
despite our street name / we didn’t grow peaches / no
one ever did / but birds & squirrels / ate off my blueberry
plants / before I could chase them / into the next morning
/ & fill a green-striped bowl that no longer exists / we
grew long / long beans that caught all strangers’ eyes / &
/ I wanted to be something / like that / something other
than soft skin for mosquito bites / I grew up to want
something / other than my mother spraying sunscreen
on my back / my father plucking weeds until the grass
burned blue / my brother recoiling from a dragonfly /
bumblebee / fairy & darting back inside / but I didn’t yet
understand / how silent / sudden / goodbyes often are

Noreen Ocampo is a Filipino American writer and poet from metro Atlanta. Her collection Not Flowers won the 2021 Variant Lit Microchap Contest, and her work can also be found in Palette PoetrySundog Lit, and Depth Cues, among others. She holds a BA in English from Emory University and currently studies poetry in the MFA program at The University of Mississippi, where she is working to document and elevate stories of Filipino Americans in the Deep South.

Katie Manning is the author of Hereverent (Agape Editions), Tasty Other (winner of the Main Street Rag Poetry Book Award), and six chapbook collections, including How to Play (Louisiana Literature Press) and 28,065 Nights (River Glass Books). Her poem “What to Expect” was featured on the Poetry Unbound podcast, and her poems have appeared in HAD, Poet Lore, SWWIM, Stirring, Thimble, Verse Daily, and many other venues. Katie is the founder and editor-in-chief of Whale Road Review and a professor of writing at Point Loma Nazarene University.

The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Bath by Jen Silverman


This selection, chosen by guest editor Katie Manning, is from Bath by Jen Silverman, released by Driftwood Press in 2022.

Bath 11

On New Year’s Eve my ex’s wife tells us about giving birth
to their daughter - about the salty Hudson Valley midwives

who thronged her - the lady doctor, face carved like a river-
bed, who shouted at her What are you waiting for -

and she repeated it to herself again and again until it was a
much larger question: What am I waiting for? -

about how her one fear was pooping in the bed and she kept
asking her husband, B, Am I pooping? did I poop? -

and each time he’d tell her You aren’t pooping - but even now
she isn’t sure if he lied. They are sober, drinking seltzer,

my partner and I are drinking our last glasses of wine before
a month-long fast; the first of the year is always the moment

to set ourselves towards the people we wish we were,
hit a button, launch. We pull Tarot cards from three different decks;

one of them is blunter than the others; when I fail it gives me
the Eight of Swords; when I am afraid, it tells me: What are you waiting for.

B pulls the Eight of Pentacles, his wife the Five, and my partner
pulls the Sun. Earlier in the night we pulled a card for their daughter,

who is sleeping in our bedroom after we danced her around the
hardwood floors, held her small shocked face to the revelation of

lights stringing the tree. Sometimes I pull back and look down at us
with a god’s eye. Sometimes all times coexist, and his wife is giving birth

at the same time that all of us are meeting, at the same time
that B and I are breaking up, both of us sobbing hysterically,

and his pronouns are still she/ her, and I don’t yet have ink all over
my arms, and my partner is a bright horizon that has yet to arrive.

Jen Silverman is a New York-based writer and playwright. Jen is the author of the debut novel We Play Ourselves and the story collection The Island Dwellers (Random House) which was longlisted for a PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize. Additional work has appeared in Vogue, The Paris Review, Ploughshares, Prairie Schooner, The Sun, and elsewhere. Jen’s plays have been produced across the United States and internationally. Jen is a three-time MacDowell Colony fellow, a member of New Dramatists, and the recipient of an NEA Fellowship, a New York Foundation for the Arts grant, the Yale Drama Series Award, and a Playwrights of New York Fellowship. Jen also writes for TV and film.

Katie Manning is the author of Hereverent (Agape Editions), Tasty Other (winner of the Main Street Rag Poetry Book Award), and six chapbook collections, including How to Play (Louisiana Literature Press) and 28,065 Nights (River Glass Books). Her poem “What to Expect” was featured on the Poetry Unbound podcast, and her poems have appeared in HAD, Poet Lore, SWWIM, Stirring, Thimble, Verse Daily, and many other venues. Katie is the founder and editor-in-chief of Whale Road Review and a professor of writing at Point Loma Nazarene University.