Category: Wardrobe Best Dressed

The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Self-Talk by Esinam Bediako

This selection, chosen by Guest Editor Romy Ewing, is from Self-Talk by Esinam Bediako (Porkbelly Press 2025).

Content Warning: racism or racialized violence

Offering

For mercy, I lay at your feet all I own:
rocks and stones and bricks I collected
as a child who liked the idea of collections;
my summer of permed hair when my mother
finally let me let the gheri curl go; the fall
when all that heat-stressed hair broke away
in clumps in my comb; my blood and
the shame that came with it, the buds
and their bloom and the cramped style
of becoming; a woman—my seventh-grade
best friend’s mother, no less—laughing
at my body in a bathing suit, at the way
my hair shrunk in the pool; my father’s hand
with the hole in its heart that I missed
when he forgot to wave goodbye;
the heart-shaped notebook my sister gave me;
all the notebooks everybody gave me;
all the words that didn’t come;
all the words that did.

Esinam Bediako (she/her) is a Ghanaian American writer from Detroit. She is the author of the Ann Petry Award-winning novel, Blood on the Brain (Red Hen Press, 2024), as well as the essay/poetry chapbook, Self-Talk (Porkbelly Press, 2025). You can find some of her recent work in Porter House Review, Cathexis Northwest Press, Great River Review, North American Review, and Southern Humanities Review. Esi lives in Claremont, CA with her family.

Romy Rhoads Ewing (she/her) writes from Sacramento, CA, where she was born and raised.  Her work has appeared in HAD, Oyez Review, Rejection Letters, Bullshit Lit, Major 7th Magazine, and more. Her poetry chapbook please stay was published in 2024 by Bottlecap Press. Her hybrid zine, someday [everybody but] us will laugh about all of this, was briefly physically distributed at the 3rd Annual Hallow-Zine Fest and is available digitally. She also edits poetry and nonfiction for JAKE and runs the archival site SACRAMENTO DIRTBAG ARCHIVES. She can be found at romyrhoadsewing.xyz


The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Self-Talk by Esinam Bediako

This selection, chosen by Guest Editor Romy Ewing, is from Self-Talk by Esinam Bediako (Porkbelly Press 2025).

Content Warning: racism or racialized violence

Self-Talk

II.

I try to say something new,
I say something wrong.



I put your words in my mouth, spit them out
to you, still wrong.

Esinam Bediako (she/her) is a Ghanaian American writer from Detroit. She is the author of the Ann Petry Award-winning novel, Blood on the Brain (Red Hen Press, 2024), as well as the essay/poetry chapbook, Self-Talk (Porkbelly Press, 2025). You can find some of her recent work in Porter House Review, Cathexis Northwest Press, Great River Review, North American Review, and Southern Humanities Review. Esi lives in Claremont, CA with her family.

Romy Rhoads Ewing (she/her) writes from Sacramento, CA, where she was born and raised.  Her work has appeared in HAD, Oyez Review, Rejection Letters, Bullshit Lit, Major 7th Magazine, and more. Her poetry chapbook please stay was published in 2024 by Bottlecap Press. Her hybrid zine, someday [everybody but] us will laugh about all of this, was briefly physically distributed at the 3rd Annual Hallow-Zine Fest and is available digitally. She also edits poetry and nonfiction for JAKE and runs the archival site SACRAMENTO DIRTBAG ARCHIVES. She can be found at romyrhoadsewing.xyz


The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Self-Talk by Esinam Bediako

This selection, chosen by Guest Editor Romy Ewing, is from Self-Talk by Esinam Bediako (Porkbelly Press 2025).

Content Warning: racism or racialized violence

Body/Mind Braid

One night, I couldn’t get close enough to the earth. Spinning,
I left my bed and pressed the length of my body to the rug,
the shell of my ear to the ground.


The cat roused from her own bed and sauntered in my
direction, only stopping when she stood so close that her fuzzy
black paws were all that I could see.


I had a sense I’d never had before, a sense I’ve never had since.
Vibration is one way to say it, flutter is another, but now I’m
just throwing words at something for which I have no words.
In my ear I heard a thrumming that I could feel in my bones,
my body a conduit for some unnamed thing.


The next morning, I woke from the living room floor, bursting
with knowledge. “I’m pregnant,” I told my husband, and his
eyes crinkled the way they do when he doesn’t believe me,
when he thinks I’m being unreasonable but doesn’t want to say
it. He asked how I knew, but I didn’t have the language. I
sputtered something about the middle of the night, dizziness,
a strange feeling. “Even the cat could tell,” I said, “and you
know animals have a sixth sense.” As if I’m not an animal
myself, as if I shouldn’t trust my own instincts.

Esinam Bediako (she/her) is a Ghanaian American writer from Detroit. She is the author of the Ann Petry Award-winning novel, Blood on the Brain (Red Hen Press, 2024), as well as the essay/poetry chapbook, Self-Talk (Porkbelly Press, 2025). You can find some of her recent work in Porter House Review, Cathexis Northwest Press, Great River Review, North American Review, and Southern Humanities Review. Esi lives in Claremont, CA with her family.

Romy Rhoads Ewing (she/her) writes from Sacramento, CA, where she was born and raised.  Her work has appeared in HAD, Oyez Review, Rejection Letters, Bullshit Lit, Major 7th Magazine, and more. Her poetry chapbook please stay was published in 2024 by Bottlecap Press. Her hybrid zine, someday [everybody but] us will laugh about all of this, was briefly physically distributed at the 3rd Annual Hallow-Zine Fest and is available digitally. She also edits poetry and nonfiction for JAKE and runs the archival site SACRAMENTO DIRTBAG ARCHIVES. She can be found at romyrhoadsewing.xyz


The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Self-Talk by Esinam Bediako

This selection, chosen by Guest Editor Romy Ewing, is from Self-Talk by Esinam Bediako (Porkbelly Press 2025).

Content Warning: racism or racialized violence

Body/Mind Braid

In elementary school, some kids chased me down in the
playground, calling me ugly and worse. I remember their names
and their words, but I won’t speak or write them, except to
point out that one of the things they called me was an ugly
African. They themselves were African American, too, but
more American than me, they figured, since their parents had
been born in the US unlike mine. I said some know-it-all thing
like, “You know you’re African, too, right?” This was an error.
Don’t try to reason when bullies are driving you into the
ground. Just run: that’s one thing, at least, for which your body
is good.

Esinam Bediako (she/her) is a Ghanaian American writer from Detroit. She is the author of the Ann Petry Award-winning novel, Blood on the Brain (Red Hen Press, 2024), as well as the essay/poetry chapbook, Self-Talk (Porkbelly Press, 2025). You can find some of her recent work in Porter House Review, Cathexis Northwest Press, Great River Review, North American Review, and Southern Humanities Review. Esi lives in Claremont, CA with her family.

Romy Rhoads Ewing (she/her) writes from Sacramento, CA, where she was born and raised.  Her work has appeared in HAD, Oyez Review, Rejection Letters, Bullshit Lit, Major 7th Magazine, and more. Her poetry chapbook please stay was published in 2024 by Bottlecap Press. Her hybrid zine, someday [everybody but] us will laugh about all of this, was briefly physically distributed at the 3rd Annual Hallow-Zine Fest and is available digitally. She also edits poetry and nonfiction for JAKE and runs the archival site SACRAMENTO DIRTBAG ARCHIVES. She can be found at romyrhoadsewing.xyz


The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Self-Talk by Esinam Bediako

This selection, chosen by Guest Editor Romy Ewing, is from Self-Talk by Esinam Bediako (Porkbelly Press 2025).

Content Warning: racism or racialized violence

Black Hard Palate

Once upon a time, you had so much pigment in your skin,
darkness pooling in your elbows, your knuckles, and especially
your knees. You looked, some kid quipped, like you’d fallen on
your knees in the blackest dirt on the rainiest day. Chocolate
knees. Shit knees. These kids were black, like you, but they
were the right kind, and you, wrong. They’re just kids being
kids, your teacher said, like you weren’t a kid, too, like you
should shoulder their cruelty, like you had to wait for them to
grow out of it.


Later, when you were older but still young, you yawned too
wide in science, and your lab partner gasped. Eww, he said,
what is that? It looks like those pictures of skin cancer from
our textbook. At home, in the mirror, you spotted a splotch on
the roof of your mouth, like a prune had flattened itself against
your hard palate. Your mother, a nurse who has seen
everything, had never seen this. Your doctor called it
hyperpigmentation, excess pigment that would likely fade
along with the darkness on the skin of your joints. Not fade,
really. Spread. You’d grow more skin, and the blackness would
have someplace to go. How long, you asked, how soon, but all
the doctor said was that you would grow out of it.

Esinam Bediako (she/her) is a Ghanaian American writer from Detroit. She is the author of the Ann Petry Award-winning novel, Blood on the Brain (Red Hen Press, 2024), as well as the essay/poetry chapbook, Self-Talk (Porkbelly Press, 2025). You can find some of her recent work in Porter House Review, Cathexis Northwest Press, Great River Review, North American Review, and Southern Humanities Review. Esi lives in Claremont, CA with her family.

Romy Rhoads Ewing (she/her) writes from Sacramento, CA, where she was born and raised.  Her work has appeared in HAD, Oyez Review, Rejection Letters, Bullshit Lit, Major 7th Magazine, and more. Her poetry chapbook please stay was published in 2024 by Bottlecap Press. Her hybrid zine, someday [everybody but] us will laugh about all of this, was briefly physically distributed at the 3rd Annual Hallow-Zine Fest and is available digitally. She also edits poetry and nonfiction for JAKE and runs the archival site SACRAMENTO DIRTBAG ARCHIVES. She can be found at romyrhoadsewing.xyz


The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: FLOWN by B. Fulton Jennes

This selection, chosen by Guest Editor Romy Ewing, is from FLOWN by B. Fulton Jennes (Porkbelly Press 2024).

My Dead Sister Speaks to Me Through Wordle

When GRAVE follows DEATH
within a few games,
I decide it’s her.

Is that you? I ask.
FALSE the day’s word.
A day later: MAYBE.

Where are you?
APART she answers.
A week later: ALONE.

How is it where you are?
For days, she’s silent.
The game is just a game.

This morning:
FLOWN.

The poems of B. Fulton Jennes have appeared widely in literary journals and anthologies, including Comstock Review, MER, Rust and Moth, SWWIM, and Tupelo Quarterly. She is the winner of the 2025 Subnivean Award, the 2023 Millennium Award, the 2022 Lascaux Prize, as well as many other poetry competitions. Her collection Blinded Birds received the 2022 International Book Award for a poetry chapbook. FLOWN—an elegy-in-verse to her late sister—was published by Porkbelly Press in 2024. A third chapbook, Dirty Bird & Myrt, will be published by Dancing Girl Press in 2026. Jennes is poet laureate emerita of Ridgefield, CT, where she directs the Poetry in the Garden festival each summer and hosts “Poems from Connecticut’s Four Corners,” a monthly online reading series.

Romy Rhoads Ewing (she/her) writes from Sacramento, CA, where she was born and raised.  Her work has appeared in HAD, Oyez Review, Rejection Letters, Bullshit Lit, Major 7th Magazine, and more. Her poetry chapbook please stay was published in 2024 by Bottlecap Press. Her hybrid zine, someday [everybody but] us will laugh about all of this, was briefly physically distributed at the 3rd Annual Hallow-Zine Fest and is available digitally. She also edits poetry and nonfiction for JAKE and runs the archival site SACRAMENTO DIRTBAG ARCHIVES. She can be found at romyrhoadsewing.xyz


The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: FLOWN by B. Fulton Jennes

This selection, chosen by Guest Editor Romy Ewing, is from FLOWN by B. Fulton Jennes (Porkbelly Press 2024).

While Picking Flowers for My Dead Sister

a sudden rain
fuses my clothing to me—

an unbearable reminder
of flesh.

The poems of B. Fulton Jennes have appeared widely in literary journals and anthologies, including Comstock Review, MER, Rust and Moth, SWWIM, and Tupelo Quarterly. She is the winner of the 2025 Subnivean Award, the 2023 Millennium Award, the 2022 Lascaux Prize, as well as many other poetry competitions. Her collection Blinded Birds received the 2022 International Book Award for a poetry chapbook. FLOWN—an elegy-in-verse to her late sister—was published by Porkbelly Press in 2024. A third chapbook, Dirty Bird & Myrt, will be published by Dancing Girl Press in 2026. Jennes is poet laureate emerita of Ridgefield, CT, where she directs the Poetry in the Garden festival each summer and hosts “Poems from Connecticut’s Four Corners,” a monthly online reading series.

Romy Rhoads Ewing (she/her) writes from Sacramento, CA, where she was born and raised.  Her work has appeared in HAD, Oyez Review, Rejection Letters, Bullshit Lit, Major 7th Magazine, and more. Her poetry chapbook please stay was published in 2024 by Bottlecap Press. Her hybrid zine, someday [everybody but] us will laugh about all of this, was briefly physically distributed at the 3rd Annual Hallow-Zine Fest and is available digitally. She also edits poetry and nonfiction for JAKE and runs the archival site SACRAMENTO DIRTBAG ARCHIVES. She can be found at romyrhoadsewing.xyz


The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: FLOWN by B. Fulton Jennes

This selection, chosen by Guest Editor Romy Ewing, is from FLOWN by B. Fulton Jennes (Porkbelly Press 2024).

My Dying Sister’s Words Are Gone

It’s no use to call now. I buy
signal lamps instead.

I touch my lamp
and hers glows pink.

She touches back,
my lamp glows blue.

All those years we didn’t talk.
Now we signal.

Pink. Blue. Pink.

In Sunday school we sang
This little light of mine

I’m gonna let it shine.
Hide it under a bushel?

Hers was always
the loudest no!

Now even the song
is gone.

The poems of B. Fulton Jennes have appeared widely in literary journals and anthologies, including Comstock Review, MER, Rust and Moth, SWWIM, and Tupelo Quarterly. She is the winner of the 2025 Subnivean Award, the 2023 Millennium Award, the 2022 Lascaux Prize, as well as many other poetry competitions. Her collection Blinded Birds received the 2022 International Book Award for a poetry chapbook. FLOWN—an elegy-in-verse to her late sister—was published by Porkbelly Press in 2024. A third chapbook, Dirty Bird & Myrt, will be published by Dancing Girl Press in 2026. Jennes is poet laureate emerita of Ridgefield, CT, where she directs the Poetry in the Garden festival each summer and hosts “Poems from Connecticut’s Four Corners,” a monthly online reading series.

Romy Rhoads Ewing (she/her) writes from Sacramento, CA, where she was born and raised.  Her work has appeared in HAD, Oyez Review, Rejection Letters, Bullshit Lit, Major 7th Magazine, and more. Her poetry chapbook please stay was published in 2024 by Bottlecap Press. Her hybrid zine, someday [everybody but] us will laugh about all of this, was briefly physically distributed at the 3rd Annual Hallow-Zine Fest and is available digitally. She also edits poetry and nonfiction for JAKE and runs the archival site SACRAMENTO DIRTBAG ARCHIVES. She can be found at romyrhoadsewing.xyz


The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: FLOWN by B. Fulton Jennes

This selection, chosen by Guest Editor Romy Ewing, is from FLOWN by B. Fulton Jennes (Porkbelly Press 2024).

Content Warning: animal death

What My Dying Sister Believed, Then Didn’t

The farmer yanks our dog,
shot dead for killing his chickens,

from his tractor bed,
thumps her onto the porch floor.

I’ll bury her in that damned hole
you three dug our father says.

I finger blood-crusted fur,
long for my sister’s comfort.

But she won’t come out
to say goodbye, tells me

That’s just her body.
Sally’s already in heaven.

Years later—married, converted—
she speaks of Sheol, the Hebrew

house of the dead. There’s no heaven
she tells me now.

The poems of B. Fulton Jennes have appeared widely in literary journals and anthologies, including Comstock Review, MER, Rust and Moth, SWWIM, and Tupelo Quarterly. She is the winner of the 2025 Subnivean Award, the 2023 Millennium Award, the 2022 Lascaux Prize, as well as many other poetry competitions. Her collection Blinded Birds received the 2022 International Book Award for a poetry chapbook. FLOWN—an elegy-in-verse to her late sister—was published by Porkbelly Press in 2024. A third chapbook, Dirty Bird & Myrt, will be published by Dancing Girl Press in 2026. Jennes is poet laureate emerita of Ridgefield, CT, where she directs the Poetry in the Garden festival each summer and hosts “Poems from Connecticut’s Four Corners,” a monthly online reading series.

Romy Rhoads Ewing (she/her) writes from Sacramento, CA, where she was born and raised.  Her work has appeared in HAD, Oyez Review, Rejection Letters, Bullshit Lit, Major 7th Magazine, and more. Her poetry chapbook please stay was published in 2024 by Bottlecap Press. Her hybrid zine, someday [everybody but] us will laugh about all of this, was briefly physically distributed at the 3rd Annual Hallow-Zine Fest and is available digitally. She also edits poetry and nonfiction for JAKE and runs the archival site SACRAMENTO DIRTBAG ARCHIVES. She can be found at romyrhoadsewing.xyz


The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: FLOWN by B. Fulton Jennes

This selection, chosen by Guest Editor Romy Ewing, is from FLOWN by B. Fulton Jennes (Porkbelly Press 2024).

What’s an Atheist? I Ask My Dying Sister, 1965

A Christmas Eve visit
to a widow’s home.

She’s an atheist, our father hisses.
Don’t say a word about presents.

What’s an atheist? I ask
on the widow’s doorstep.

She puts a finger to her lips,
tightens her grip on my hand.

Someone who doesn’t believe
in God. In Jesus. In heaven.

Not even in heaven? I whisper.
Where will she go when she dies?

In a box. In a hole.
In the dirt.

The poems of B. Fulton Jennes have appeared widely in literary journals and anthologies, including Comstock Review, MER, Rust and Moth, SWWIM, and Tupelo Quarterly. She is the winner of the 2025 Subnivean Award, the 2023 Millennium Award, the 2022 Lascaux Prize, as well as many other poetry competitions. Her collection Blinded Birds received the 2022 International Book Award for a poetry chapbook. FLOWN—an elegy-in-verse to her late sister—was published by Porkbelly Press in 2024. A third chapbook, Dirty Bird & Myrt, will be published by Dancing Girl Press in 2026. Jennes is poet laureate emerita of Ridgefield, CT, where she directs the Poetry in the Garden festival each summer and hosts “Poems from Connecticut’s Four Corners,” a monthly online reading series.

Romy Rhoads Ewing (she/her) writes from Sacramento, CA, where she was born and raised.  Her work has appeared in HAD, Oyez Review, Rejection Letters, Bullshit Lit, Major 7th Magazine, and more. Her poetry chapbook please stay was published in 2024 by Bottlecap Press. Her hybrid zine, someday [everybody but] us will laugh about all of this, was briefly physically distributed at the 3rd Annual Hallow-Zine Fest and is available digitally. She also edits poetry and nonfiction for JAKE and runs the archival site SACRAMENTO DIRTBAG ARCHIVES. She can be found at romyrhoadsewing.xyz