Meet Our New Intern: Tassneem Abdulwahab

The urge to write was not an ever-present companion in the early years of my life. It was more like a slow-rolling epiphany, sweeter, more instinctive, like a hard-earned deduction I had arrived at through a series of infallible coincidences and a steady love I hadn’t named.

Growing up in early 2000s coastal Jeddah, I—like most kids of immigrant parents—lived in a weirdly curated world, wide open yet incredibly particular. In part, I attribute this paradox to the culture that I began to recognize at the edges of my earliest memories—one that wasn’t my parents’ or Jeddah’s, but a third, strangely unified mishmash of people. Attending an international school does that.

We all spoke English and Arabic, but mostly English, and when we spoke Arabic, we borrowed phrases from each other’s dialects until you couldn’t entirely tell where anyone of us was from. That was one of the irrefutable rules of the school: it didn’t matter where you came from. Other unspoken expectations included a future STEM career, which is why, obsessed with science as I was (read: watching hours of rare disease documentaries), I wanted to become a scientist, maybe work in a lab.

I was so sure of my love for science and the predetermined path that I never gave much thought to the other hours I spent in a state of pure flow: drawing, reading, writing poetry with my childhood best friend.

It was with figuring out that I didn’t want a STEM degree that I recognized I was just as obsessed with the arts, in the way kids are: intrinsically, joyfully, like something in the human soul aches for creativity. I loved science in the way I loved puzzles, something to figure out, to learn, but I loved storytelling in a way I felt in my soul.

I hadn’t yet figured out I loved writing at eight or nine, but I loved story. I watched Mulan every day for a year and pretended I was her with a disassembled hula hoop part as my bamboo stick. Then came Tangled, Brave, and plenty of other movies in glossy DVD cases I’d pick out with my mom. Elementary school visits introduced me to The Magic Tree House; I discovered old copies of A Series of Unfortunate Events on my brother’s shelves; I read Matilda in two days. And throughout it all, I was diving into these stories, their characters, their journeys.

I wrote as a hobby, hoping to replicate the feeling of reading and watching good stories. I was good at grammar, writing with a technicality that suited 10th grade in 8th grade (and got my essay rejected for it), but it wasn’t until my junior year of high school that I realized I wanted to write, preferably forever.

And that was it. Even when everyone questioned my decision to pursue a writing degree, I knew it was what I wanted. My time at university and my lecturers shaped my writing and myself in ways I couldn’t have imagined. It was during my final year that publishing—a once mysterious entity hovering somewhere far above me and my writing—sparked my interest for the first time.

Case studies and a newfound appreciation for the teams involved in making a book made me want to play a part in the publishing process, to champion global voices in a way that made sense to child me who thought the diversity inside her school bubble was the norm everywhere. I’m incredibly excited to see what the next six months with Sundress will bring, and I can’t wait to be part of making literary things happen!

Tassneem Abdulwahab (she/her) is an aspiring writer and editor with a BA (Hons) Creative and Professional Writing from UWE Bristol. With a strong interest in culture, history, and psychology and a love for fiction, her writing often draws on one or more of these threads to tell character-centric stories. Trained in oil painting, she recently exhibited and sold two portrait paintings in February 2025. In her free time, you can find her buying more books (no, seriously—she owns three editions of Little Women), snapping pictures of the little details, or sitting at her easel!

The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Dogwitch by Catherine Rockwood

This selection, chosen by guest editor nat raum, is from Dogwitch by Catherine Rockwood (Bottlecap Press, 2025).

Ode to Meanness

You dig a pit for the thought she never would
and kick that thought into it.
Now. There go the lights
snapping on in minds that overlooked you
secure in thinking they’d explained your place
and you had to agree.

What have you done? At first it’s disappointment
but soon the pain will hit and they’ll be angry.
The tool they thought you would consent to be
sticks out from their ribs. It’s making way
with a happy little wiggle, broadening
the outlet for its
point.

Oh, how could you?

Like this. Like you’ve stayed hungry,
cutting your pads on glass, all on your lonesome
since the day boss said “you’re a good girl,
we’ll get to that tomorrow.”
Moderation
is what was spoken of:
too bad for them they didn’t note the green
coming over your vision like a scrim
of moderately-now-I’ll-burn-your-farm.

  O, Meanness! Generations
of dirt-wall cellars and the rusted nail
inside loose shingle rise to your clenched fists.
The bone-marked cur that mauls
the well-fed hand now looks to you
with frightening devotion.
These six feet
that you’ll be buried in are your old home
and room enough
to bring proud towers down.

Catherine Rockwood (she/they) lives near Boston. She reads and edits for Reckoning Magazine. Two of Catherine’s poetry chapbooks, Endeavors To Obtain Perpetual Motion and And We Are Far From Shore: Poems for Our Flag Means Death, are available from The Ethel Zine Press. Their third chapbook, Dogwitch, is available from Bottlecap Press. They are wrangling a long full-length poetry manuscript — or perhaps two shorter manuscripts — who knows? Up with mystery!


nat raum (b. 1996) is a queer disabled artist, writer, and editor based on unceded Piscataway and Susquehannock land in Baltimore. They hold an MFA from the University of Baltimore and a BFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art. Past and upcoming publishers of their work include Poet Lore, beestung, Baltimore Beat, Split Lip Magazine, BRUISER, and others. Find them online at natraum.com.

The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Dogwitch by Catherine Rockwood

This selection, chosen by guest editor nat raum, is from Dogwitch by Catherine Rockwood (Bottlecap Press, 2025).

Trouble

You big messy hound
you bad bitch.

I delight
in your mid-air lollop
your ear-flapping speed

your eight nipples
like two rows of raindrops
slamming into dark water.

Catherine Rockwood (she/they) lives near Boston. She reads and edits for Reckoning Magazine. Two of Catherine’s poetry chapbooks, Endeavors To Obtain Perpetual Motion and And We Are Far From Shore: Poems for Our Flag Means Death, are available from The Ethel Zine Press. Their third chapbook, Dogwitch, is available from Bottlecap Press. They are wrangling a long full-length poetry manuscript — or perhaps two shorter manuscripts — who knows? Up with mystery!


nat raum (b. 1996) is a queer disabled artist, writer, and editor based on unceded Piscataway and Susquehannock land in Baltimore. They hold an MFA from the University of Baltimore and a BFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art. Past and upcoming publishers of their work include Poet Lore, beestung, Baltimore Beat, Split Lip Magazine, BRUISER, and others. Find them online at natraum.com.

The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Split Daughter of Eve by Catherine Gonick

This selection, chosen by guest editor nat raum, is from Split Daughter of Eve by Catherine Gonick (Sheila-Na-Gig Editions, 2025).

When the Minotaur Was a Girl

                                     —Ariadne returns for her half-sister.

Greetings, Ariadne. Tell the truth. If I’d been all-girl, slim
and pretty like you, would you have helped him try
to murder me?

      You’re breathing? You’re still alive?

You woke me from a nap.

       Impossible.

I’m surprised to see you too. You traded my life for a promise
of marriage. What kind of sister does that?

       Theseus told me you were dead when he left this chamber.
       Was that another lie? Like when he said he loved me?

He thought he finished me. Look at the scar on my neck.

       Huge. Still, how lovely your woman’s head looks, so like our mother’s.
       Yet so small atop your father’s gift to you, your godlike bull’s body.

Oh yes, I’m a real family monster. Another reason to get rid
of me.

       Poor, cursed thing, if only you’d turned out part cow. Instead
       of locking you away, we could have kept you in my garden,
       fed you grass.

No need for regrets. The young humans were tasty.

       You must believe this, after Theseus abandoned me, I flew
       into a fury. Then thought of you and was ashamed. I wished
       only to return, give you a proper burial.

So finally, you understand rage. I’m not impressed.

       Sister, I beg you to forgive me. I loved that man as much
       as I feared your awful hunger.

I’m hungry now. Why don’t you feed me those funeral
offerings? I’d like to try that honey and wine.

       Of course. Open your mouth. And please, watch where you step.

Delicious. I’ll have another cup.

       Now, Sister, you must let me help: I have a new man now, a god
       who is my husband. Come with me.

To live in your yard like a pet?

       You’ll live like a queen in our palace. You can’t stay here.
       Outside this room, the walls have collapsed.

I brought them down after Theseus left.

       All by yourself? Zeus help me! Well, it’s hot out there.
       I’ll give you my hat.

How about a dress, to cover my animal parts?

       What nonsense. You’re splendid just as you are. I’d be thrilled
       to have your strength.

You don’t need it, not with your looks.

       Please. We can walk away and be immortals.

As a woman-beast? No thanks.

       We can be happy together. Trust me; I’ve changed so much.

You’re still a princess. And so stupid.

       I’m still your sister.

So let me tell you: I could have killed your darling warrior
in a minute. But I hoped if I let him go, you people would leave
me alone. Is there any more food?

       You’re still hungry?

You have no idea how much I can eat. If I were you, I’d go now.

Catherine Gonick has published poetry in journals including Sheila-Na-Gig, The Notre Dame Review, Beltway Poetry Quarterly, Pedestal, The Orchards Poetry Journal, One Art, Of The Book, The Nu Review, Judith, Nashim, and The New Verse News. Her work has also appeared in anthologies including in plein air, Poetic License Press; Grabbed: Poets & Writers on Sexual Assault, Empowerment and Healing, Beacon Press; Dead of Winter 2021, Milk & Cake Press; Support Ukraine, Moonstone Press; and Rumors, Secrets & Lies: Poems About Pregnancy, Abortion and Choice, Anhinga Press. Her poems have been featured in Verse Daily and Best American Poetry: Pick of the Week. She is a winner of the Ina Coolbrith Prize for Poetry and was a finalist in the Louisville Actors Theatre 10-Minute Play Contest. A native of California’s Bay Area, she lives in the Hudson Valley with her husband, and works with him in a company that slows the rate of global warming.


nat raum (b. 1996) is a queer disabled artist, writer, and editor based on unceded Piscataway and Susquehannock land in Baltimore. They hold an MFA from the University of Baltimore and a BFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art. Past and upcoming publishers of their work include Poet Lore, beestung, Baltimore Beat, Split Lip Magazine, BRUISER, and others. Find them online at natraum.com.

The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Split Daughter of Eve by Catherine Gonick

This selection, chosen by guest editor nat raum, is from Split Daughter of Eve by Catherine Gonick (Sheila-Na-Gig Editions, 2025).

Newcomers

The only Jews in town, my father’s family
was respected. The churchgoers
in Red Oak, Iowa, considered them
People of the Book they hadn’t read.

Kindergarten was a huge surprise,
a place where everyone spoke
another language and no one
understood my father’s.

By the time a boy on the playground
told him the Jews killed Christ,
my father knew enough English
to ask, “Who’s that?”

I don’t know if his parents, Yiddish
speaking atheists from Odessa, provided
an answer to his question. In 1916,
America was at peace, little boys

in Red Oak could still watch horses
pull a fire engine through the streets, and,
as People of the Book, my grandparents
might have felt safe there from pogroms.

Catherine Gonick has published poetry in journals including Sheila-Na-Gig, The Notre Dame Review, Beltway Poetry Quarterly, Pedestal, The Orchards Poetry Journal, One Art, Of The Book, The Nu Review, Judith, Nashim, and The New Verse News. Her work has also appeared in anthologies including in plein air, Poetic License Press; Grabbed: Poets & Writers on Sexual Assault, Empowerment and Healing, Beacon Press; Dead of Winter 2021, Milk & Cake Press; Support Ukraine, Moonstone Press; and Rumors, Secrets & Lies: Poems About Pregnancy, Abortion and Choice, Anhinga Press. Her poems have been featured in Verse Daily and Best American Poetry: Pick of the Week. She is a winner of the Ina Coolbrith Prize for Poetry and was a finalist in the Louisville Actors Theatre 10-Minute Play Contest. A native of California’s Bay Area, she lives in the Hudson Valley with her husband, and works with him in a company that slows the rate of global warming.


nat raum (b. 1996) is a queer disabled artist, writer, and editor based on unceded Piscataway and Susquehannock land in Baltimore. They hold an MFA from the University of Baltimore and a BFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art. Past and upcoming publishers of their work include Poet Lore, beestung, Baltimore Beat, Split Lip Magazine, BRUISER, and others. Find them online at natraum.com.

The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Split Daughter of Eve by Catherine Gonick

This selection, chosen by guest editor nat raum, is from Split Daughter of Eve by Catherine Gonick (Sheila-Na-Gig Editions, 2025).

Being Treated as Dead

How tribal it feels, like being shunned
by Amish, shown the dirt
road out from a Pilgrim town,
forbidden to place a last offering

of flowers in a palm leaf
basket at the village shrine
in Bali. But even a family
of two sisters is a tribe.

A radioactive horse between us
couldn’t decay fast enough
for us to outlive its halflives.
She disowned me, left me

for dead, like a daughter
of Orthodox Jews who marries
a goy. Did she sit shiva,
cover mirrors? Does she light

yahrzeit candles? I’m wearing
a shroud, so can’t understand
how she can still send cards
for Christmas and my birthday,

containing still more cards entitling
me to free coffee. Is she buying
time? Will I be dead only for
a decade, like an ostracized

Athenian official? If life,
as a Buddhist teacher said,
boils down to three words,
not always so, do I try to detach

from both hope and fear?
I feel like Schrödinger’s cat,
condemned to remain
both dead and alive, or half

of an entangled pair of sub-atomic
particles that can’t unknow each other,
from any distance. After thirty
years of not speaking

to her sister, our dying
mother said, This is silly
I should call her, but didn’t.
Constellations revolve, above

and below the horizon.
Tracked by stars, malign
and kind—before death,
who can say what’s final?

Catherine Gonick has published poetry in journals including Sheila-Na-Gig, The Notre Dame Review, Beltway Poetry Quarterly, Pedestal, The Orchards Poetry Journal, One Art, Of The Book, The Nu Review, Judith, Nashim, and The New Verse News. Her work has also appeared in anthologies including in plein air, Poetic License Press; Grabbed: Poets & Writers on Sexual Assault, Empowerment and Healing, Beacon Press; Dead of Winter 2021, Milk & Cake Press; Support Ukraine, Moonstone Press; and Rumors, Secrets & Lies: Poems About Pregnancy, Abortion and Choice, Anhinga Press. Her poems have been featured in Verse Daily and Best American Poetry: Pick of the Week. She is a winner of the Ina Coolbrith Prize for Poetry and was a finalist in the Louisville Actors Theatre 10-Minute Play Contest. A native of California’s Bay Area, she lives in the Hudson Valley with her husband, and works with him in a company that slows the rate of global warming.


nat raum (b. 1996) is a queer disabled artist, writer, and editor based on unceded Piscataway and Susquehannock land in Baltimore. They hold an MFA from the University of Baltimore and a BFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art. Past and upcoming publishers of their work include Poet Lore, beestung, Baltimore Beat, Split Lip Magazine, BRUISER, and others. Find them online at natraum.com.

Sundress Reads: Review of Nonbinary Bird of Paradise

Sundress Reads black-and-white logo with a sheep sitting on a stool next to the words "Sundress Reads." The sheep is wearing glasses and holding a cup filled with a hot drink in one hoof and holding an open book in the other.
There are plants and yellow flowers in the middle, covering a small nest filled with eggs. Three birds are in a fight with a big open-mouthed snake. The snake is seemingly about to attack one bird, while the second bird is at the top left hand corner and the third bird is behind the snake, its beak close to the snake's eye. The background is a rusty red brown color. "Nonbinary Bird of Paradise" is typed at the bottom of the cover with the author's name "Emilia Phillips" is in smaller font underneath the word "Paradise."

In Emilia Phillips’ Nonbinary Bird of Paradise (The University of Akron Press, 2024), God is many things: they are “a knot / that knows how to untie itself,” “the first/war,”  a “voyeur, who gave / [the speaker] dreams to cover the dark / valley of [their] loneliness / with wildflowering / mosquitoes” (19, 21, 6). Overflowing with references to their upbringing in the church, Phillips chronicles the manifestations of gods in their childhood, weaving their own queerness into retellings of stories from the Judeo-Christian and classical canon. Nonbinary Bird of Paradise is a reckoning with, and reclamation of, this volatile past–both their personal history, and a greater human mythology stained with misogyny, queer erasure, and a relentless centering of heterosexuality.

The collection begins with a Genesis-like series of poems titled “Queerness of Eve” divided into twelve ‘books’ (no accident, seeing as the Old Testament depicts the twelve sons of Jacob, the early patriarchs of the Bible). In “Book IV,” the speaker conjoins their own mythology with that of Eve, writing, “Woman always settled / on me like snow / on warm ground. Briefly” (Phillips 9).  Phillips’ Eve feels no closeness with God or Adam, but rather holds a litany of unanswered questions; they write,

 “I once

asked God the which

came first question

but he only answered

by taking

out his pencil

eraser to the concept

drawing. He was Adam’s

friend. Not mine.” (10)

Eve turns God’s own strategy against him to create a femme lover in “Book VI,” proclaiming, “God made man / in his own image, / so they say. / So I made a beloved / in mine” (Phillips 13).  The forbidden fruit for this Eve, then, is not fruit at all, but rather “peachflesh / muscled in [their] cage” (Phillips 18). After she and Adam are exiled from the Garden of Eden following God’s discovery of her creation, she divulges, “No one / can exile / me from / desire, not / even / desire” (Phillips 22). In moments like these, Eve carves out an identity for herself in the very spaces in which God and Adam seek to erase her, asking, “How do I make silence / my gender?” (Phillips 9). Throughout the loneliness and subjugation of the “Queerness of Eve,” Phillips skillfully imbues the speaker with quiet resilience; Eve repeatedly returns to her inner fortitude in the midst of punishment from male forces that attempt to control and subdue her. 

In the second part of Nonbinary Bird of Paradise, the reader is wrenched from this somber story of Eve’s exile and punishment for her defiance of God’s heteronormative hierarchies into the undeniable present; the two opening poems are about Wi-Fi and Google. The speaker still visits mythology, but from a distance; on a writer’s retreat, they sleep beneath a painting of the Rape of Io, a river god’s daughter who was raped by the Roman god Jupiter. This, again, interweaves with their own stories as they decide to leave their husband, telling the reader, “I called him to say / I was coming home / soon but not to / him” (Phillips 36).  Later in this section, after more contemporary poems that discuss french horns and butterfly houses, the speaker again inhabits a Biblical woman: the nameless wife of Noah, describing life before and after the flood (here, in a series of poems titled “Antediluvian,” “Diluvian,” “Covenant,” and “Postdiluvian”). Phillips again revisits the dismissal of female voices by Biblical giants; the speaker describes how she

“kept

begging Noah to build slower

much slower, to never

finish, to save the world

by never hammering

the last nail

into the ark. What

did I know,

he wondered

aloud. I was

just a vessel,

like the ship.” (57)

By comparing Noah’s wife to the “captive stock” of the ship (ibid.), and likening the ark to a body being lowered into a grave (58), Phillips forces the reader to consider the manipulation of female lives in service of male whims and dreams.

In its third and final act, Nonbinary Bird of Paradise transports the reader from queer mourning into full-throated queer reclamation. Where there were motifs of profound, ancestral loss learned across generations (alongside dry, self-aware humor: in “Queerness of Eve,” the speaker admits, “You probably guessed / I created the female orgasm / all by my lonesome” (Phillips 3). In this Part Three, we encounter story after story of triumphant and playful defiance. Mythology and literature become a vehicle by which our speaker finds empowerment, a lineage of resistance. In “Emilia, Widow to Iago,” Shakespeare’s Othello serves as a method for our speaker to “dodge the dagger,” faking their death in order to escape cleaning up a man’s mess and avoid being his “rag and mop” (Phillips 74). In the next poem, the speaker again reminisces on a self they’ve shed in the voice of the naiad Daphne, who transformed into a tree to escape the sexual advances of Apollo. Resolute even in a new form, Daphne implores the reader: 

“Women especially

hear me. If I had fallen with no one

around, I still would have

made a sound.” (Phillips 75)

The speaker embraces humor and sensuality as they do their queerness in Part Three as well,  savoring the sonics of the words “lesbian elephants” as they fantasize about draping their trunk over their lover’s shoulders “like a boa constrictor” (Phillips 84). Alongside other delights of Part Three, including a laugh-out-loud poem satirizing gender reveals (“We’re having a cigarette after sex! We’re having it! Like once or twice a week!” [Phillips 69]), the collection’s titular love poem also comes in this section. Phillips writes, “Would you stay/& watch me, even/though I have no blue velvet/skirt or ruby-raw/throat?” (63). The speaker imagines how they would woo their beloved as a bird-of-paradise, without the gendered anatomy to perform standard mating rituals.

In Nonbinary Bird of Paradise, Emilia Phillips critiques, mourns, and reinvents classical stories by giving female queer heroines a voice within their pages. These heroines search for Gods everywhere, and often are left wanting. But by the end of this collection, the speaker has identified a potent God to whom they can speak – that which exists in those they love. In the irreverently gorgeous “Artemis Wears A Strap-On”, they proclaim their worship for their lover: “What is godlike in you,/ I’ll godden” (Phillips 79). I have found much to godden in the vividly transporting pages of Phillips’ fifth collection, Nonbinary Bird of Paradise.

Nonbinary Bird of Paradise is available from the University of Akron Press

Catie Macauley (they/he/she) is a transmasculine aspiring poet living and working in Boston. They study Sociology, Environmental Studies, and English at Wellesley College, where they also compete on the Wellesley Whiptails frisbee team and perform with the Wellesley Shakespeare Society. A Best of the Net 2024 Nominee, his writing has appeared in brawl lit, The Wellesley News, and the Young Writer’s Project, among other publications. In their free time, Catie enjoys boxing, re-reading A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and buying far too many books at independent bookstores – primarily the Grolier Poetry Bookshop, where they are somehow lucky enough to work.

Sundress Academy for the Arts Presents “The Enthusiasm of Influence”

The Sundress Academy for the Arts is excited to present “The Enthusiasm of Influence,” a workshop led by Sandra Marchetti on Wednesday, October 8th from 6:00-7:30 PM EST. This event will be held over Zoom. Participants can access the event at tiny.utk.edu/sundress (password: safta).

We’ve all heard of the “anxiety” of influence. Have you ever struggled to pin down who or what is influencing your writing? Do you want to learn how to write with your influences instead of against them? Do you worry that acknowledging your influences makes your work less likely to be taken seriously? Do you want to find out more about what makes you, you on the page? If so, this workshop will help you to sleuth your voice.

You will learn how your influences are working in your writing, how to make an influence-driven exercise into a polished piece, and how and when to “steal” from writers you love. Literary “influencers” like Jessica Rae Bergamino, Ansel Elkins, and Colm Tóibín will be discussed. Bring two influential texts (art, poems, music!) to share, a pre-existing draft of your own that you want to revise, and some blank notebook paper! 

While there is no fee to participate in this workshop, those who are able and appreciative may make donations directly to Sandra Marchetti via Venmo:@Sandra-Marchetti-1.

Sandra Marchetti is the 2023 winner of The Twin Bill Book Prize for Best Baseball Poetry Book of the Year. She is the author of three full-length collections of poetry, DIORAMA, from Stephen F. Austin State University Press (2025), Aisle 228 (SFA Press, 2023), and Confluence (Sundress Publications, 2015). Sandy is also the author of four chapbooks of poetry and lyric essays. Her poetry and essays appear widely in Mid-American Review, Blackbird, Ecotone, Southwest Review, Subtropics, and elsewhere. She is Poetry Editor Emerita at River Styx Magazine. Sandy earned an MFA in Creative Writing—Poetry from George Mason University and now serves as the Assistant Director of Academic Support at Harper College in Chicagoland.

This event is brought to you by a grant provided by the Tennessee Arts Commission. 

Sundress Academy for the Arts Presents October Poetry Xfit

The Sundress Academy for the Arts is excited to present Poetry Xfit hosted by Bleah Patterson. This generative workshop event will take place on Sunday, October 26th, from 2 to 4 pm EST via Zoom. Join us at the link tiny.utk.edu/sundress with the password “safta”.

Poetry Xfit isn’t about throwing tires or heavy ropes, but the idea of confusing our muscles is the same. You will receive ideas, guidelines, and more as part of this generative workshop series in order to complete three poems in two hours. A new set of prompts will be provided after the writers have written collaboratively for thirty minutes. The goal is to create material that can be later modified and transformed into artwork rather than producing flawless final versions. The event is open to prose authors as well!

Bleah Patterson is a queer, southern poet from Texas. Much of her work explores the contention between identity and home and has been featured or is forthcoming in various journals including Electric Literature, Pinch, Grist, The Laurel Review, Phoebe Literature, The Rumpus, and Taco Bell Quarterly.

While this is a free event, donations can be made to the Sundress Academy for the Arts here.

The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Split Daughter of Eve by Catherine Gonick

This selection, chosen by guest editor nat raum, is from Split Daughter of Eve by Catherine Gonick (Sheila-Na-Gig Editions, 2025).

Deus Absconditus

Jesus looks at me from his cross and I suddenly know: He’s only
human. He says my name. Heaven has changed, but our
second-grade nun didn’t hear. She keeps reading aloud,
preparing the class for First Holy Communion.

My mother throws a coat over her nightgown to drive me
to mass, then waits in the car with a book. My father’s Jewish.
They’re both atheists.

If I could go outside, I might see God as an almost-face
in a cloud. And feel the warm breath of the Holy Ghost.
Those two like being invisible. When I asked why, Sister said,
It’s a mystery.

I stare at Jesus. He stays silent. What if he came down?
I could wipe the blood from his hands, comb his matted hair.
We could go for a walk. I would share my sandwich.

Jesus looks like he’s thinking it over. But he doesn’t move.
How am I supposed to live the rest of my life?

A priest comes in, points to a water stain under the crucifix
tells us it looks like Golgotha. I see a dingy wall and feel
embarrassed by the show. God deserves more.
Yet I need to be kind.

Certainty ends, longing begins. Many years later I learn
that when Pompey conquered Jerusalem, drove his chariot
through streets of golden stone, he entered the Holy of Holies,
the Temple’s most sacred space, and was amazed
to find it was an empty room.

Catherine Gonick has published poetry in journals including Sheila-Na-Gig, The Notre Dame Review, Beltway Poetry Quarterly, Pedestal, The Orchards Poetry Journal, One Art, Of The Book, The Nu Review, Judith, Nashim, and The New Verse News. Her work has also appeared in anthologies including in plein air, Poetic License Press; Grabbed: Poets & Writers on Sexual Assault, Empowerment and Healing, Beacon Press; Dead of Winter 2021, Milk & Cake Press; Support Ukraine, Moonstone Press; and Rumors, Secrets & Lies: Poems About Pregnancy, Abortion and Choice, Anhinga Press. Her poems have been featured in Verse Daily and Best American Poetry: Pick of the Week. She is a winner of the Ina Coolbrith Prize for Poetry and was a finalist in the Louisville Actors Theatre 10-Minute Play Contest. A native of California’s Bay Area, she lives in the Hudson Valley with her husband, and works with him in a company that slows the rate of global warming.


nat raum (b. 1996) is a queer disabled artist, writer, and editor based on unceded Piscataway and Susquehannock land in Baltimore. They hold an MFA from the University of Baltimore and a BFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art. Past and upcoming publishers of their work include Poet Lore, beestung, Baltimore Beat, Split Lip Magazine, BRUISER, and others. Find them online at natraum.com.