The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Spoil by Alyse Bensel

This selection, chosen by guest editor Merrick Sloane, is from Spoil by Alyse Bensel (Stephen F. Austin State University Press, 2024).

Lies to Tell the Body

I became the opposite of orgasm,
               breathing with the cyst
nestled in my left ovary, where the pelvic
               bone juts up to meet
skin and socket. I tongued demands,
               a steel countertop parallel
to my spine, while doctors insisted I could
              conduct animal electricity.
A spark would jolt my limbs
              to swagger off
the table, proof of something alive
               inside my muscle.
Could I keep the yolk whole, a tiny
              fluid-filled sac that if  it bursts,
it bursts? It would have been a relief
               to lose a little more. You could stand to lose
more, he told me. Weighing pears, he estimated
               how much I would need, suggesting
serving sizes, his perfect portions.
               My uneaten bite,
my refusal to measure. I left one
               curled arugula leaf or crusts
from toast. The year of almost. The year
               of maybe. Men moved
their unsteady chins up and down.
               They told me, if  only,
my body a tragedy. If I burst,
               I burst, no more hurt than
the sharp pinch from a man bumbling
               across my feet. I watched
my tropical fish die from fin rot. The tetras
              went first. My blue
gourami the last, half floating, half swimming
               on the water’s scummy edge.
Two red drops and two yellow drops to stop
               the infection. It still
spread. I was never at home. I combed every aisle
               of the grocery store, my nails
digging in for miracles. I harvested
               tomatoes, chard, green beans.
I was not a morning person.
               I was not a night
person. I was a midday creature that slept
               opposite of any man.
I stayed awake longer. After that year, I grew
               all muscle and sinew:
my husband looked at me like a panther. He cut
               my haunches on his teeth,
pressing the mechanism inside my pelvic floor—
               reincarnate, reincarnate.

Alyse Bensel is the author of Spoil (SFASU Press, 2024) and Rare Wondrous Things: A Poetic Biography of Maria Sibylla Merian (Green Writers Press, 2020) as well as three chapbooks, including Lies to Tell the Body (Seven Kitchens Press, 2018). Her poems and essays have appeared in Cream City Review, Pleaides, South Dakota Review, and West Branch. Originally born and raised in south-central Pennsylvania, she now lives in the mountains of Western North Carolina, where she is an associate professor of English at Brevard College and director of the Looking Glass Rock Writers’ Conference.


Merrick Sloane (they/them) is a neuro-Queer 90’s kid and nonbinary poet, editor, and researcher from Oklahoma who’s a sucker for expletives and second languages. They hold an MFA in creative writing from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville and are Associate Poetry Editor of Doubleback Review. Merrick’s work has appeared in The Central Dissent: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality, Stories for the Road: Trauma and Internal Communication, BLEACH!, citizen trans* {project}, Arcana Poetry and is forthcoming in Puerto del Sol and ANMLY. Merrick’s poetry was recently selected as a winner of the Garden Party Collective’s contest on Neurodivergence / Intersectionality and as a winner for AWP’s 2025 Intro Journal Awards. Their work has received support from the DreamYard Rad(ical) Poetry Consortium and Sundress Publications. Merrick writes so that others may feel radically loved.

Sundress Reads: Review of small earthly space

Sundress Reads logo, which shows a sheep reading, with glasses on and a book. Logo is black and white.
small earthly space book cover, which shows a red poppy blossom with a starry sky in the background

With an intriguing curlew bird guiding the reader on a journey of metaphysical thoughts and poppies dancing us from page to page, small earthly space (Shanti Arts Publishing, 2025) by Marjorie Maddox is an enchanting collection of poems that mix the everyday with the spiritual and preternatural. Part nature writing and part musing on the human experience, this book will cause you to pause and reflect, both to appreciate the grandeur of the prose and to enjoy being struck by the meanings. Unique artworks by Karen Elias are perfectly paired with each poem, and I would personally love several of them displayed on my wall next to their inspirations.

Divided into five parts, small earthly space begins with an introduction to the messenger—the curlew—who has some saintly connections it forages for, when not burrowing deep for its own sustenance. “How far down would you go for wisdom?” (Maddox 23) we are asked, while the curlew takes us to the depths of the ocean before showing us the fine line that separates heaven from earth above. At times, the poetry has a mysterious vibe, and at other times, a more worldly one. The curlew sketches the spiritual for us, after which “another Babel [is] reconstructed in our own image” (Maddox 24) and we enter the human-focused world.

Part II brings us sharply to poetry about the everyday: about a mother sitting quietly, about a home, and about eating blueberry pie at a cemetery. We’re walked through a junkyard and deathbed before getting to rejoin nature with a gentle poem of clouds and dandelions. After the more transcendental topics of Part I, Part II feels like we’ve landed on the ground, and are walking around observing everyday life from within rather than soaring around it. Part III contains a few poems about an intense wildfire that happened in the town of Curlew, Washington. We meet our curlew bird again, this time as a witness to the destruction from the wildfire. Topics of devastation and danger feature in this section, along with some environmental poetry about endangered species, including humans. Our curlew witness calls out into the loneliness of the wildfire-ravaged ecosystem and gets no response. Maddox helps the reader experience the loneliness of the burned landscape before we’re whisked away to Part IV and a more stellar atmosphere.

A curlew bird is bending down, examining a bright red poppy it has just discovered. The ground is grey and seems desolate, as if it might be on the moon or an alien planet. In the background is a starry sky with a purple nebula and a crescent moon or planet.
Curlew of the New Moon Discovers a Poppy

My favorite poem from this collection opens Part IV: “Curlew of the New Moon Discovers a Poppy.” The curlew remembers the beauty of the poppies before the destruction and

  “un-buries instead the curved
  brilliance of joy, hallucinates
  a happiness addictive enough
  to be real.” (Maddox 76)

The reader feels wonder and awe again, at the beauty Earth offers us. We then sail through a set of poppy-themed poems, each lovely and paired with a custom artwork, as seen in the accompanying image here by Elias. As a fan of nature poetry, I love seeing this themed section. We read of a poppy’s connection with a cedar tree and glimpse the poppy’s personality (sometimes shy, sometimes bold), which introduces us to the last part of this book called “Bloom.”

Most of the pieces in this book fit on one page or two opposing pages, but two pieces are longer: “Made to Scale” and “Hues of the Hollyhock.” “Made to Scale” treats us to a more extensive writing about beginnings and endings and opportunities. In a forest of possibilities, everything depends on your own views and actions. Maddox repeats the following idea in multiple ways throughout the poem: “It is only a door if you enter or leave” (Maddox 47). After all, if you don’t use it, what may be a door might as well be a stone wall.

The second long poem of the book opens Part V, meditating on the many “Hues of the Hollyhock.” Unlike what you might expect, only one featured hue is a pink. We see a ghostbloom, blood flowers, and black hollyhocks, all written about with dark words and topics. An excerpt from “Hues of the Hollyhock”:

  “O ghost
    of Seasons Past, if these shadows

  remain unaltered by the Future …,
    will only black smoke and drab ash,
  ubiquitous soot and too-late regret
    populate our abandoned gardens?” (Maddox 90)

The poem ebbs and subsides with a light show in a kimono blossom brightening our senses before transitioning to a quiet amber calm, then, a final splash of rainbow color.

Most of the writing in this collection treats the prosaic with elegance. Maddox infuses her style into each poem, whether the theme is nature or more Gothic like death and destruction. The book touches the spiritual while keeping us grounded with bold visuals, traveling through both the unknown as well as the “imaginative and geographical locations we call home” (Maddox 17).

small earthly space has broad appeal, and I recommend it for most adult readers, for both casual or thought-provoking reading. This collection can be enjoyed both in public or private, but is best read somewhere where you have space for peaceful contemplation. Your own backyard or a public garden or park would be ideal. I would also like to recommend the following tea pairing Bird Nerd Birdwatching Tea. This tea combines the familiar into a unique blend that will both sooth and gently stimulate your senses, enriching your similar reading experience of small earthly space.

small earthly space is available from Shanti Arts Publishing

Ana Mourant sitting on grass reading a book. She has light skin and blonde hair, has a sunflower in her hair, and is wearing a green sundress.

Ana Mourant (she/her) is an editorial intern for Sundress Publications and a recent graduate of the University of Washington’s editing program. She holds a Certificate in Editing as well as a Certificate in Storytelling and Content Strategy, and a BA in English Language and Literature, with a minor in Professional Writing. Ana conducts manuscript evaluations, edits, and proofreads, as well as provides authenticity and sensitivity readings for Indigenous Peoples content. Ana loves nature writing and Indigenous cultures, and, when she’s not working, is often out in the wilderness tracking animals, Nordic skiing, or just enjoying nature.

Meet Our New Intern: Lizzy DiGrande

A white woman wearing a light blue beret and a puffy black coat smiles at the camera. She has light brown hair and is posing in front of a field of grass and yellow flowers, with a body of water behind her and a gloomy sky above.

From the very beginning, loving books came easier than loving myself. At three years old, home videos taken on a dusty camcorder feature me “reading” stories to a circle of plush bears and uninterested dolls. In elementary school, I’d spend hours circling new titles in book fair catalogs, saving up my allowance to buy the latest Junie B. Jones or Magic Tree House installment. For over two decades, books have helped me navigate joy, grief, insecurity, and everything in between. They were how I learned to make sense of my tumultuous or painfully monotonous world, and challenged the dimensions of my growing mind and heart.

Now, as a graduate student in Emerson College’s Publishing and Writing program, I’m chasing the dream of sharing what I’ve always believed: storytelling can change the world. But it hasn’t always been as easy as getting lost in books about fairies with personality-coordinated outfits.  

I left for Boston on the precipice of my twenty-second birthday with little more than decade-old dragonfly-printed bed sheets and a lifelong dream. I’d just graduated from a small, rural university in North Carolina, unsure if I was ready for the next step, unsure if I could make it in publishing. But when I stepped into my tiny shoebox of an apartment in Boston’s North End, I could smell olive oil and roasted garlic through the open window, and I tried to romanticize the waves of uncertainty laced with familiarity—my twin bed, the student budget, the fear. That first night, as I lay in bed, staring at the barren walls and wrapped in sheets that once encompassed my five-year-old body, the irony was not lost on me. In the throes of my childhood identity, it felt like I was abruptly on the cliff of adulthood and perhaps something horrifically fantastic.

At first, grad school brought small victories: encouraging feedback on assignments, seeing my name on a byline for the first time, new people that I could share my innermost thoughts with after only a month of friendship. But by the end of September, I hit a wall. The high of starting a new life started to wear off, and like a flood rushing in, I suddenly felt overwhelmingly alone. I was surrounded by a life that bore my name but didn’t quite feel like mine.

I booked a spontaneous trip home—complete with four hours of Phoebe Bridgers soundtracking the Amtrak’s Northeast Regional train and concluding with a cathartic cry in the front seat of my dad’s car. But at home, I unearthed a discovery in my childhood basement: three journals from second and third grade. Pages filled with my earliest stories about birds and queens, and poems about flowers and sisters. They weren’t Mary Oliver quality, but they were undeniably mine. In one entry, I wrote about wanting to be a children’s book author. I had forgotten about that dream. Reading my words, etched in purple glitter pen and riddled with misspelled adjectives, reminded me that I intrinsically always knew who I had the potential to become. I’ve always been a writer. I’ve always wanted to tell stories. That girl, who once slept in the same sheets I still swim in now, wouldn’t possibly believe the opportunities she’s chasing.  

This desire to tell stories, preserve memory, and honor people who might otherwise be forgotten has always taken residency in my consciousness. Two years before the basement discovery, I found myself wandering a sun-scorched outdoor market in Lisbon, Portugal. My right sock kept slipping beneath my heel within my boot, folding over like a slice of bologna on rye, and amidst the chaos, I was drawn to a box of old photographs at a corner booth.

There were hundreds of them, Polaroids and prints, some in color but most black and white with yellowing edges and distinctive faces. There were men with cars, cats on windowsills, beaming wedding parties holding plates of vanilla cake. But one photo stopped me, devoid of color but revealing a mother and teenage daughter embracing, dated 1942. The girl peered at the camera intensely as her mother’s eyes locked on something beyond the lens. The way they held each other, the similarities of their Roman noses, seemed so familiar to me, and yet these people were strangers, perhaps even ghosts now.

Holding the photo against the sun’s glare, my thoughts churned with images of the women in my life, my bloodline, and I felt a surge of desperation to squeeze someone’s hand in mine just so I could feel small again. If I could buy this picture, salvage this mother and daughter, and put them somewhere safe in my room, they would never be forgotten. I would remember their faces, if not their true names and stories, but ones I’d make up and tell with love, regardless. And that is a task I want to spend the rest of my life doing.

That’s why I’m here, at Sundress and in the publishing industry. Sundress publishes the voices of those habitually silenced and pushes the boundaries of an accessible and inclusive literary world. Storytelling has always been a form of love and resistance, a way of remembering and reclaiming. I’m honored to support an independent press that shares these same values.

If I could speak to the eight-year-old girl with the dragonfly bedsheets and purple glitter pen, I think she’d understand exactly why I’m here.

Elizabeth “Lizzy” DiGrande is a graduate student in Emerson College’s Publishing and Writing program, where she also serves as a Transformational Leaders Fellow and Writing Assistant for the Emerson Grad Life Blog. She is on the board of the Women’s National Book Association, Boston chapter, and is passionate about amplifying women’s voices in publishing. Originally from New Jersey, Lizzy now resides in Boston and can often be found perusing the city’s public libraries or exploring new restaurants. She hopes to build a career as both a food writer and literary agent championing female-identifying authors.

The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Spoil by Alyse Bensel

This selection, chosen by guest editor Merrick Sloane, is from Spoil by Alyse Bensel (Stephen F. Austin State University Press, 2024).

Vinegar and Honey

You are insect today,
flighty but easily seduced
with sugar. I drink wine
in bed, empty the litterbox,
anything a pregnant woman
should not do. I lace vinegar
with dish soap to cure all
the sweetness in my kitchen
and ward off fruit flies
drawn to rot. I dress
my unrepentant feast,
my mouth full of honey
that dilutes the spoiled wine
I held too long under my tongue.
Sundays, I am on my knees.
Evenings, I break my fast
with a meal that quiets
my sharp thirst. I scour
the house. I read your letters
empty as shed cicada skins,
a memory of the shiny nymph
that fled for its short ticking life.
Once I make a crown
from those exoskeletons
I know you will mistake
me for one of your own.
You will linger despite
the dangerous cold to cry
your dying tymbal song.

Alyse Bensel is the author of Spoil (SFASU Press, 2024) and Rare Wondrous Things: A Poetic Biography of Maria Sibylla Merian (Green Writers Press, 2020) as well as three chapbooks, including Lies to Tell the Body (Seven Kitchens Press, 2018). Her poems and essays have appeared in Cream City Review, Pleaides, South Dakota Review, and West Branch. Originally born and raised in south-central Pennsylvania, she now lives in the mountains of Western North Carolina, where she is an associate professor of English at Brevard College and director of the Looking Glass Rock Writers’ Conference.


Merrick Sloane (they/them) is a neuro-Queer 90’s kid and nonbinary poet, editor, and researcher from Oklahoma who’s a sucker for expletives and second languages. They hold an MFA in creative writing from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville and are Associate Poetry Editor of Doubleback Review. Merrick’s work has appeared in The Central Dissent: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality, Stories for the Road: Trauma and Internal Communication, BLEACH!, citizen trans* {project}, Arcana Poetry and is forthcoming in Puerto del Sol and ANMLY. Merrick’s poetry was recently selected as a winner of the Garden Party Collective’s contest on Neurodivergence / Intersectionality and as a winner for AWP’s 2025 Intro Journal Awards. Their work has received support from the DreamYard Rad(ical) Poetry Consortium and Sundress Publications. Merrick writes so that others may feel radically loved.

The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Spoil by Alyse Bensel

This selection, chosen by guest editor Merrick Sloane, is from Spoil by Alyse Bensel (Stephen F. Austin State University Press, 2024).

Hurricane Season

Disaster has been brewing all spring,
its genesis slick as an overripe plum

that falls in a heap of skin and pulp.
Clouds gather like starlings. A widening mouth

borrows the ocean. Fast talker, yarn spinner,
spool thick with clouds. I’m safe in the middle

of the continent—no shoreline to trace,
no widow’s walk to pace. I open windows

to welcome a wind that when caged
can collapse walls, level an island.

The news reports a surging tide,
a narrow miss. While the ocean ticks

up degrees, I read the weather
as a series of chances:

roll the dice, be ready to lose.
Houses are a game of pick-up sticks,

playthings built to collapse.
When there is no more tree line,

everything kneels. Tragedies
on the seismic scale don’t even

register on the news. No one blames
this violence on themselves

but after, parents won’t give
their children those names

for years, won’t put destruction
in such a small body.

Alyse Bensel is the author of Spoil (SFASU Press, 2024) and Rare Wondrous Things: A Poetic Biography of Maria Sibylla Merian (Green Writers Press, 2020) as well as three chapbooks, including Lies to Tell the Body (Seven Kitchens Press, 2018). Her poems and essays have appeared in Cream City Review, Pleaides, South Dakota Review, and West Branch. Originally born and raised in south-central Pennsylvania, she now lives in the mountains of Western North Carolina, where she is an associate professor of English at Brevard College and director of the Looking Glass Rock Writers’ Conference.


Merrick Sloane (they/them) is a neuro-Queer 90’s kid and nonbinary poet, editor, and researcher from Oklahoma who’s a sucker for expletives and second languages. They hold an MFA in creative writing from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville and are Associate Poetry Editor of Doubleback Review. Merrick’s work has appeared in The Central Dissent: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality, Stories for the Road: Trauma and Internal Communication, BLEACH!, citizen trans* {project}, Arcana Poetry and is forthcoming in Puerto del Sol and ANMLY. Merrick’s poetry was recently selected as a winner of the Garden Party Collective’s contest on Neurodivergence / Intersectionality and as a winner for AWP’s 2025 Intro Journal Awards. Their work has received support from the DreamYard Rad(ical) Poetry Consortium and Sundress Publications. Merrick writes so that others may feel radically loved.

The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Spoil by Alyse Bensel

This selection, chosen by guest editor Merrick Sloane, is from Spoil by Alyse Bensel (Stephen F. Austin State University Press, 2024).

Shotgun

Let’s start with her, pregnant, you,
unknowing, then knowing, me,

learning. I’m tired of this narrative
I’ve numbed to, like a twelve-gauge

fired off too many times against
my shoulder. I used to watch

my father disassemble and clean
his guns, then put them back together.

My non-pregnancy is an anti-narrative.
The hollow in my throat

constricts as I’m written out.
People ask me why I know so much

about motherhood and childbirth.
They ask me how many children

I have. I reply, none. The narrative stops.
A wedding, an ultrasound,

a countdown to when you disappear.
I cease to matter. My potential

children don’t exist. I met a woman
who married because, two months

into dating, she took antibiotics.
Her son was round and luminous.

She could not believe he existed.
We discussed caesareans,

mastitis, stitches, the slow
healing process. Postpartum.

She asked me to find
her husband. He ignored her.

The shotgun’s primary parts:
the barrel most of all, where you

pull the snake through, scrub
the chokes, clean apparent filth

off the action. Who made
the weapon? Who harbored it?

I have the story out of order.
There are too many moving parts

I mistook for an opportunity
to clear this up. I keep on missing

everything you left out.
This narrative may not

hit its intended mark. I blame
any misfire on my ignorance.

Alyse Bensel is the author of Spoil (SFASU Press, 2024) and Rare Wondrous Things: A Poetic Biography of Maria Sibylla Merian (Green Writers Press, 2020) as well as three chapbooks, including Lies to Tell the Body (Seven Kitchens Press, 2018). Her poems and essays have appeared in Cream City Review, Pleaides, South Dakota Review, and West Branch. Originally born and raised in south-central Pennsylvania, she now lives in the mountains of Western North Carolina, where she is an associate professor of English at Brevard College and director of the Looking Glass Rock Writers’ Conference.


Merrick Sloane (they/them) is a neuro-Queer 90’s kid and nonbinary poet, editor, and researcher from Oklahoma who’s a sucker for expletives and second languages. They hold an MFA in creative writing from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville and are Associate Poetry Editor of Doubleback Review. Merrick’s work has appeared in The Central Dissent: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality, Stories for the Road: Trauma and Internal Communication, BLEACH!, citizen trans* {project}, Arcana Poetry and is forthcoming in Puerto del Sol and ANMLY. Merrick’s poetry was recently selected as a winner of the Garden Party Collective’s contest on Neurodivergence / Intersectionality and as a winner for AWP’s 2025 Intro Journal Awards. Their work has received support from the DreamYard Rad(ical) Poetry Consortium and Sundress Publications. Merrick writes so that others may feel radically loved.

The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Spoil by Alyse Bensel

This selection, chosen by guest editor Merrick Sloane, is from Spoil by Alyse Bensel (Stephen F. Austin State University Press, 2024).

Facebook Messenger Pastoral

I say prairie. You say nowhere
                               close enough to the ocean.
On your drive to work the sunlight

               glaring off the mountains
must be the same that filters
                               through my Midwestern paned

windows. From my landlocked island
               I trace the Kaw’s path, a thread
in the embroidery of rivers

                               that feeds into the gulf. A salt
cure for distance. But I won’t write to you
               about how last night a man at the bar

overheard me say your island’s
                               name in my mouth.
He summoned those mountains

               on his phone. El Yunque. Direct flights
are cheap, he reminded me. I choked
                               on my pineapple vodka. All these

years are for nothing.
                I do not leave. You do not return.

Alyse Bensel is the author of Spoil (SFASU Press, 2024) and Rare Wondrous Things: A Poetic Biography of Maria Sibylla Merian (Green Writers Press, 2020) as well as three chapbooks, including Lies to Tell the Body (Seven Kitchens Press, 2018). Her poems and essays have appeared in Cream City Review, Pleaides, South Dakota Review, and West Branch. Originally born and raised in south-central Pennsylvania, she now lives in the mountains of Western North Carolina, where she is an associate professor of English at Brevard College and director of the Looking Glass Rock Writers’ Conference.


Merrick Sloane (they/them) is a neuro-Queer 90’s kid and nonbinary poet, editor, and researcher from Oklahoma who’s a sucker for expletives and second languages. They hold an MFA in creative writing from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville and are Associate Poetry Editor of Doubleback Review. Merrick’s work has appeared in The Central Dissent: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality, Stories for the Road: Trauma and Internal Communication, BLEACH!, citizen trans* {project}, Arcana Poetry and is forthcoming in Puerto del Sol and ANMLY. Merrick’s poetry was recently selected as a winner of the Garden Party Collective’s contest on Neurodivergence / Intersectionality and as a winner for AWP’s 2025 Intro Journal Awards. Their work has received support from the DreamYard Rad(ical) Poetry Consortium and Sundress Publications. Merrick writes so that others may feel radically loved.

The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: When the Trumpet Is Blown by Quraishiyah Durbarry

This selection, chosen by guest editor Merrick Sloane, is from When the Trumpet Is Blown by Quraishiyah Durbarry (Resource Publications, 2023).

9.

The door I bang on
Is invisible
My voice rang in the
Void
And your name dies on my lips
Every time I call it
Though I do everything right
I bind my mind
In blind faith
And chant your name
A hundred times
Breaching on heresy
Yet. . .
Your voice does not come to my ear
Not even blurry lines
In the wasteland of my amnesic
Memory
I hold your cloth
Like a talisman to my heart
But my imagination
Fickle as fire in a gale
Cannot fly heavenly high
It wanders about and sets

On the lowly grind
On a dirty, ugly, daily
Regime
And I bang on
From one o’clock to 2 o’clock
As a remembrance of a remembrance

Quraishiyah Durbarry is a doctoral student in comparative literature at the University of Clermont Auvergne and has so far ventured into several genres, including poetry, novel, and drama. A bilingual author, Quraishiyah writes in both English and French. She was Co-Laureate and Laureate of the Writing Prize for the Passe Portes Festival of the European Union in 2015 and 2016 respectively.

Merrick Sloane (they/them) is a neuro-Queer 90’s kid and nonbinary poet, editor, and researcher from Oklahoma who’s a sucker for expletives and second languages. They hold an MFA in creative writing from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville and are Associate Poetry Editor of Doubleback Review. Merrick’s work has appeared in The Central Dissent: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality, Stories for the Road: Trauma and Internal Communication, BLEACH!, citizen trans* {project}, Arcana Poetry and is forthcoming in Puerto del Sol and ANMLY. Merrick’s poetry was recently selected as a winner of the Garden Party Collective’s contest on Neurodivergence / Intersectionality and as a winner for AWP’s 2025 Intro Journal Awards. Their work has received support from the DreamYard Rad(ical) Poetry Consortium and Sundress Publications. Merrick writes so that others may feel radically loved.

The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: When the Trumpet Is Blown by Quraishiyah Durbarry

This selection, chosen by guest editor Merrick Sloane, is from When the Trumpet Is Blown by Quraishiyah Durbarry (Resource Publications, 2023).

6. 

What when a heaven is tattered
And when the silken drapes
You painted your future on
Gape at you with
Wide-eyed embers
When the goal you were running to
Has been removed
But you have to run on
When dreams lie shredded
But you dream on
After you forced shut down
Your lids
What when you built nothing more
Than a towering jenga
And for every 3 blocks you’ve been adding
One is removed
And what when it all collapses
And you build on and build again
And mend the shreds
And sew the holes
But that heaven will never be
Even with a hole in your head
Or a stake through your heart

Quraishiyah Durbarry is a doctoral student in comparative literature at the University of Clermont Auvergne and has so far ventured into several genres, including poetry, novel, and drama. A bilingual author, Quraishiyah writes in both English and French. She was Co-Laureate and Laureate of the Writing Prize for the Passe Portes Festival of the European Union in 2015 and 2016 respectively.

Merrick Sloane (they/them) is a neuro-Queer 90’s kid and nonbinary poet, editor, and researcher from Oklahoma who’s a sucker for expletives and second languages. They hold an MFA in creative writing from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville and are Associate Poetry Editor of Doubleback Review. Merrick’s work has appeared in The Central Dissent: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality, Stories for the Road: Trauma and Internal Communication, BLEACH!, citizen trans* {project}, Arcana Poetry and is forthcoming in Puerto del Sol and ANMLY. Merrick’s poetry was recently selected as a winner of the Garden Party Collective’s contest on Neurodivergence / Intersectionality and as a winner for AWP’s 2025 Intro Journal Awards. Their work has received support from the DreamYard Rad(ical) Poetry Consortium and Sundress Publications. Merrick writes so that others may feel radically loved.

The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: When the Trumpet Is Blown by Quraishiyah Durbarry

This selection, chosen by guest editor Merrick Sloane, is from When the Trumpet Is Blown by Quraishiyah Durbarry (Resource Publications, 2023).

10.

The cradle went this way
And that
Back and forth
And forth
And back
A motion that will die in time
But not now
Not soon
It cradles physics
And mass and matter
It cradles beings I guess
And souls too
I imagine a soul back and forth
Love back and forth
Sadness back and forth
And perhaps petty happiness too
And I imagine a ripple in the future
When you died
And a tear in the past
A thousand years before
Ripping the present
To a cut in the future
Travelling back

And creating the deluge
That drowned all but Noah’s Ark

Quraishiyah Durbarry is a doctoral student in comparative literature at the University of Clermont Auvergne and has so far ventured into several genres, including poetry, novel, and drama. A bilingual author, Quraishiyah writes in both English and French. She was Co-Laureate and Laureate of the Writing Prize for the Passe Portes Festival of the European Union in 2015 and 2016 respectively.

Merrick Sloane (they/them) is a neuro-Queer 90’s kid and nonbinary poet, editor, and researcher from Oklahoma who’s a sucker for expletives and second languages. They hold an MFA in creative writing from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville and are Associate Poetry Editor of Doubleback Review. Merrick’s work has appeared in The Central Dissent: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality, Stories for the Road: Trauma and Internal Communication, BLEACH!, citizen trans* {project}, Arcana Poetry and is forthcoming in Puerto del Sol and ANMLY. Merrick’s poetry was recently selected as a winner of the Garden Party Collective’s contest on Neurodivergence / Intersectionality and as a winner for AWP’s 2025 Intro Journal Awards. Their work has received support from the DreamYard Rad(ical) Poetry Consortium and Sundress Publications. Merrick writes so that others may feel radically loved.