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Content Warning: sexual violence

                                    Trout Fishing

She sits across from him at the small coffee shop,
gazes out the window speckled with rain.
She can see their reflections—the sudden,
sharp fish hook of her jaw, his long fingers
curled around the saucer of coffee between them—
so many things that can snare a person.

He looks at her, notices the soft seams of her sweater,
how the wide neck leaves ample room for her to maneuver,
snug and free as the trout that slipped away from his fine hook
last summer at Watauga Lake. The sudden glint of steel
off sunlight, the slight jerk of his hand on the rod in anticipation.
He could feel the hook claw harmless at the scales even then.

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Content Warning: sexual violence

                 Snippets—I Can’t

“Sometimes I can’t tell if I like a girl
as a friend or as girlfriend material.”

Snippets of a conversation overheard
in passing while boarding the subway.

Sometimes I can’t tell whether
I speak aloud or in my paper-thin head.

It does not help that things
                echo here in the chambers of Manhattan.

I can’t tell if I can hear
                 correctly, if I can see the faces correctly.

Sometimes I think I see
myself. Material becomes immaterial

like a chain of paper angels, wings
                 severed with each gentle snip of the doors.

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Content Warning: sexual violence

               Palm Up, Fingers Curled (Or, This is How it Happened)

I sit on my grandparent’s back porch,
in a chair at their glass table.

Grandpa is on my left;
my father across from him,
to the right of me at the head of the table.

Grandpa is describing the recent
                                                               abduction of a young woman.

It had been in the news a few days before.

My father had yet to hear the story—
it wasn’t just an abduction, we learned;

two men had kidnapped, raped, mutilated,
                                                                      then murdered the woman.
Grandfather goes into specifics,
                                                describing how the men had tied her to the bedpost
and taken turns.

The young woman was young,
a girl really, just sixteen years old.

Grandpa makes eye contact with me—
then with his son
                                  as he relays the most gruesome details.

At other times during the telling,
he looks down and speaks to his
reflection in the dusty glass of the table.

His face, at those moments, has a look of incredulity,
as if even he is shocked to hear the story he is voicing.

My father breathes the word “Jesus”
at various intervals. He glances at me,
                                                              on occasion.

The things he must be imagining—
worst-case scenarios involving me
                                                            in her place.

When I first sat down
I had not known what they were discussing.

It was summer, early July.

Our entire family was over
for our annual cookout.

I had expected the conversation to be light, airy,
like biting into a slice of watermelon.

                               Instead, I sit down to hear him say
one of the men had cut off the young woman’s left breast.

And I don’t just mean her nipple, he said.
                                                          Her entire breast.

He holds his hand out, palm up with his fingers curled,
as if that very breast was perched there in his hand.

                 The air around us grows oppressive.

I do not want to stay—to listen—
but I also don’t want to stand
                                                and leave so soon after having
                          just sat down.

So I stay. I listen.

Until my grandfather
                                    holds out that hand,

his palm a sign of wealth—
                 all the years he has lived
                                                         weaving a tangled tapestry
                                                                                  across his soft, tan skin;

the shape his palm makes, as if he were offering
                 his beating heart,

                                     or if his other hand joins in,
                                                                   as if he were begging for mercy—
but it is just the one hand,
               golden band reflecting the sun’s gaze.
                                                                                I look away.

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Content Warning: sexual harrassment

               How Could This Have Happened?

“What’s your name?”

                                        “Claire.”
“Claire,” he repeats.

My name always sounded flat to me,
but when he says it, he lingers
on the vowel, drawing
                                    out the “air.”

It’s eerie, this feeling.

We stand in the middle of the double
entrance to the Knoxville Public Library;
two people, one coming—

                                                               one going.

“Where are you from, Claire?”

                                “It’s—” I pause, unsure
how to evade the question.
                                “It’s a ways away from here.
                               You probably don’t know the place.”

“I know a lot of places.”

He smiles, sticks his hands
in his pockets.

The library receptionist is watching us
                                                    through the glass door.

I can’t stop glancing at her.

“How far away is it?”

My eyes are pulled back to his face.

                                       “Oh, about an hour and a half,” I say,
                                       sure the information is useless.

There are a lot of places an hour
and a half away from where we stand.

I inch closer to the second set of doors,
                                         which lead outside.

“We’re friends, right?” he asks.

I nod, my gaze on the door,
               hands clenched to hide the tremble.

                                         I force my fists to unravel.
                                        “Sure. We’re friends, I guess.”

I look at him.
He smiles again.

His teeth are thin and yellow, like a rat’s.
They look brittle, as if they could fall out.

“I have a lot of friends who are girls.
I met them the same way I met you
                                                          just now.
You should come over sometime—

to my place, meet them. We can all
be friends
                   and have a good time, together.”

I don’t respond.

I put my hand on the outer door,
                                                  angle my body away from him.

The receptionist is standing now, watching.

The man on display with me
does not appear to notice our viewers.

He moves closer.

“What are you doing right now?” he asks.

His voice is low. He is bent slightly at the waist,
leaning his shoulders and face closer.

“Do you want to go with me to meet them?”

                                        Them. His friends.

He lifts his hand as if to touch my face.

                                        “I’m sorry,”

I stammer.

                                      “I have to go.”

I push open the door,
feel the rush of air and noise—
                 loud as the blood roaring in my ears.

I look back to see him shake his head, turn away.

I nearly trip down the concrete steps.
                      At my car, the books—
                                 thrown in the passenger seat.
                                       I climb in and lock the doors.
                                                Grip the steering wheel—
                                                               not so hard.
                                                                                       Breathe.

*                                               *                                                  *   

I’m not unnerved by what he said,
                but by how easy
                            he made it seem.

I could have left with him—
                                                  disappeared—
a simple thing, really.

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              In the Beginning

Talking and driving down
                 Sevierville back roads
          late at night,

we did not see the wayward
              limb, heavily adorned with leaves,
                                      until it was almost upon us.

You swerved,
                rescuing us last-minute,
   and we sat in stunned
                                        silence—

’til we looked at each other and laughed.

We were young and fearless;
                    we had more time ahead of us
                              than leaves on that branch—
                                                   and we were burning stars.

We laughed
                                 and laughed
and swerved
                                 past obstacles—

race horses in the Milky Way,
fluid and untraceable.

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This week, Managing Editor Merrick Sloane shares a new selection from each of their 8 favorite books featured on The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed in 2025.

Content Warning: suicide

Stay

Wanting to die isn’t the same
as no longer wanting to live—
stepping, for a moment, into
the street. Yes, this isn’t even

your worst year, but you’re
of an age—horror weighing
pockets like stones. If you
walk down to the river now,

it won’t be as before—tears
gumming eyes—but calm
as thumbing a final page
and sliding the book back

onto a shelf. It would mean
you’d seen enough people
who, rather than treat their
pit bull’s infection, remove

her eyes; manatees carved
with the president’s name;
cities barbed to prevent rest.
Being alive is not the same

as wanting to live, though
drought-stunted magnolias
blush green this morning.
Once, when you were very

young, you camped under
one in a friend’s yard, woke
in moonlight and unzipped
the tent to spring’s white

offerings. So in your right
pocket, stones; left, flowers.
Sink fists in them both. Stay.

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This week, Managing Editor Merrick Sloane shares a new selection from each of their 8 favorite books featured on The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed in 2025.

IN GERUDO VALLEY

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This week, Managing Editor Merrick Sloane shares a new selection from each of their 8 favorite books featured on The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed in 2025.

Content Warning: sexual violence

Kissing Angelina

             from Belfast

She whispers bastard in my ear, her hands cupped tight,
breath hot, forbidden. I know a few swear words

and this one feels hollow, blank, but when mom says
That’s not a nice name to call someone, I know it’s a bad one,

it’s got weight. I keep it in my pocket for later when a boy
snakes his hand up my dress. For when a man presses too close

in the elevator. Say it in someone’s dark garage in high school.
Say it in the basement of the library. Say it to my husband.

Angelina has it in her pocket all along: embedded
in her hip bone, a quick-draw curse for her father,

her brother, her brother’s friends, friends’ brothers,
and the men who blew up the hair salon

where her best friend sat, spinning in a chair,
hair curled for communion.

Later, after the world has lifted its skirt to me and bared
its dark weapons, I will see a photo of her

and her daughter, still a baby, toothless and clean,
words slipping off her skin smooth as milk.

But for now, we will say the word over and over.
It tastes like smoke, spice, smells like Angelina’s

breath when it is close to my face in the bedroom
where midnight falls down around us

like so much pipe bomb shrapnel,
a girl’s soft hair, a girl’s parted lips.

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This week, Managing Editor Merrick Sloane shares a new selection from each of their 8 favorite books featured on The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed in 2025.

READING FRANKENSTEIN IN SEPTEMBER

Let me say that I too wanted to die. Wanted
to abandon my post, listening at the bathroom door

for the sound of my father finishing his work, expelling
the body’s refuse. I listened not out of a curiosity, but out

of warning: an assurance he wouldn’t fall, or hit his head
on something. I listened to ensure one of us lived.

There was no snow-slicked tundra here, no ship locked
in the embrace of ice. In fact, I sweated through my shirt,

the last, hot tongues of summer teasing along my neck.
My father kept the apartment chilled, a bottle of white wine

held at the closure. And when I cut his toenails, I did so
with the devotion of a child confronted with their father’s mortality

for the first time: fearful, a little nervous. I shouldn’t
have worried. The clippers sliced through the thickened edge

of the nail efficiently. Their sick noise sounded in the silence,
while I knelt at the foot of my creator. I could have spent my life stitching

what is precious together again: the line between my first initial
and the middle name of his other daughter, the one who died.

I could have spent my life chasing the ideal female:
her name was Rebecca. Her little fists opened and closed,

then opened again. Her lungs: little birds in flight.

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This week, Managing Editor Merrick Sloane shares a new selection from each of their 8 favorite books featured on The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed in 2025.

Angel

There he was: grief-eyed lightning
struck
                                             with tenderness.
                Coughing up hope
to make way                       for the water
                entering his lungs.

                                I knew that boy was an angel
because his rage was sung,
                                              not spoken.
His hands
                                that destroyed nothing
                  but themselves.

                  His skin already soaked through
with everything but light.
                  Because he looked into the fire
and saw only                        the light’s consequence.

Divine fury. Righteous blood
-letting.                  The earth cradles him
                                                                like a grenade.

Snowdrop.                            Rainfall.
                                He is every beautiful thing named
                at the moment of its dying.

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