The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Boys Buy Me Drinks to Watch Me Fall Down by Anna Dickson James

This selection, chosen by managing editor Krista Cox, is from Boys Buy Me Drinks to Watch Me Fall Down by Anna Dickson James (Whiskey Tit 2023).

Who’s a Good Girl

(excerpt)

There are mountains in West Virginia that are wild and unclaimed, and my husband, Dante, sold all of his tech stocks and bought a plot of land on top of one of those mountains. A crew of men cleared a patch in his name, barely big enough to hide a house in between the trees, and I hadn’t heard a word about it until it had a foundation and the wooden frames of 4 bedrooms, one for me and Dante, one for our boy, Ted, one for our girl, Meg, and one for all of our overnight guests. Before we had time to discuss it, the house had a kitchen with quartz countertops and an island with a second sink. It had two ovens, one for the turkey and the other for the sweet potato casserole and the green beans with French fried onions, enough to feed a crowd, and it never occurred to him that no one would drive those curved roads and ascend that mountain to visit.

To say that I was angry was an understatement, but I shouldn’t have been surprised as his motto was, “It’s better to beg forgiveness than it is to ask permission.”

He paid his penance when I packed up the kids and moved back in with my widowed dad. The kids stayed in the refurbished basement rec room, and I slept in the bedroom I’d grown up in on the frilly canopy bed with cheap plastic finals, one of which fell off every time the door slammed shut too hard. The smell of my father’s bratwurst and tobacco, coupled with his grumpy attitude, untampered by my mother’s kindness and allowed to run wild after her death, drove me insane.

“Why is your hair like that?” he said to Ted, referring to the curls that fell below his earlobes, and Ted shrunk a little under his criticizing eye.

“You’re getting chunky,” he said to Meg, pinching her belly.

“Why doesn’t your husband want you?” he asked me while the kids were lying on the floor watching TV with the sound low, hearing every word.

Even in these modern times, unless your husband is a known rake or quick with a fist, it’s still mostly a woman’s fault when a marriage falls apart. In my case, I was simultaneously too emasculating and too needy. After three weeks under siege at my dad’s, I hit up a bar, ruining my 472 days of sobriety. It seems that I needed Dante to keep me square.

Anna Dickson James earned her MFA from Queens University of Charlotte and is an Associate Professor of English at Garrett College in Deep Creek, Maryland. While she hasn’t lived her stories as written, she found that composing them helped her understand a time in her life when she, despite identifying as a feminist, gave up much of her personal power. Now, as a certified mindset coach she helps small groups of women find their strength and claim their autonomy.

Krista Cox is the Managing Editor of Sundress Publications, The Wardrobe, and Doubleback Review. She’s a poet and editor and currently pursuing her master’s in clinical mental health counseling. Mostly, like everyone, she’s just trying to stay hydrated while she fights the system.

The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Boys Buy Me Drinks to Watch Me Fall Down by Anna Dickson James

This selection, chosen by managing editor Krista Cox, is from Boys Buy Me Drinks to Watch Me Fall Down by Anna Dickson James (Whiskey Tit 2023).

Proud to be a Shriner’s Wife

(excerpt)

Gretchen’s been dating a 24-year-old professional boat racer from Brazil named Audato. She met him at the Kroger’s, picking among the tomatoes and iceberg. Iceberg for Christ’s sake. I could see if she were tiptoeing through the arugula or stroking suggestive spines of dragon fruit, but she met him shopping for the kind of bland, hot house salad my mother makes. Me? I’m the one eating the grapples, the cremini, the mesclun. If I weren’t so proud to be a Shriner’s wife, I’d wonder when my Brazilian would show.

Audato heads home in two weeks, and he’s taking Gretchen with him. She’s going to wait on the shore in a white pant suit and a blue scarf around her neck waving and smiling while he makes his way to the deck. I know this because I coached her out of the Macy’s and into Gabrielle’s downtown where she could get a properly made suit, and for more casual occasions, custom fitted jeans. The individualized tailoring only costs $50 more, and I wanted her to have them. She also tried on a stunning black bikini with little white dots and plump red cherries that laid out across her chest like a buffet. It lifted her breasts nicely, so nicely that it made Gretchen blush and hitch a minute or two before she agreed to let me buy it for her. We cut the tags and rolled the items neatly like cotton sushi and tucked them into two new, pink, hard-shelled luggage cases and set them beside her door three days before she was to leave.

When Audato came for Gretchen’s goodbye dinner, he brought a pitcher of Brazilian sangria, which turned out to be an ecstatic blend of $6 wine, fruit punch, Sprite, and maraschino cherries. He’d actually brought two pitchers, one in a sweating glass pitcher, the other in a Tupperware container as a backup. We had a marvelous time, talking and laughing, listening to Audato wax poetic in his thick Portuguese accent. Gretchen stayed at his side, giggling girlishly, preening her hair, and popping breath mints after every round of drinks. The laughing exfoliated my soul, and even my dear husband, Petey, laughed so wide that I could see his row of silver fillings in the back of his mouth.

Anna Dickson James earned her MFA from Queens University of Charlotte and is an Associate Professor of English at Garrett College in Deep Creek, Maryland. While she hasn’t lived her stories as written, she found that composing them helped her understand a time in her life when she, despite identifying as a feminist, gave up much of her personal power. Now, as a certified mindset coach she helps small groups of women find their strength and claim their autonomy.

Krista Cox is the Managing Editor of Sundress Publications, The Wardrobe, and Doubleback Review. She’s a poet and editor and currently pursuing her master’s in clinical mental health counseling. Mostly, she’s just trying to stay hydrated while she fights the system.

Sundress Reads: Review of Agave Blues

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.
The back of a person with long brown hair in a cream colored hat and a bright pink dress is shown. The person is facing the yellow, blue, and pink sky. The person is in a field of blue and turquoise agaves. "Agave Blues" is at the top with the author's name "Ruthi Marlenée" is at the bottom.

Simultaneously, our lives change and stay the same. We always end up where we began, our home. With regards to family, home can be complicated or simple or both. Each year I age, I settle into the idea of always needing to go home. In my late teenhood and early 20s, I demanded a reason to visit my small town in south Texas. A birthday party, an ill family member, celebration of new life and death itself. That demand has turned into a longing and gratitude to still have a reason because despite all of our differences, I want to know the stories that came before me.

Ruthie Marlenée’s Agave Blues (Pelekinesis, 2024) follows main character, Maya, on her journey home to Mexico upon her estranged father’s death. Marlenée playfully weaves history and family stories with Maya’s painful present as she reconnects with her daughter Lily, extended family and friends on their agave farm. She has spent her life avoiding the inevitable return after immigrating to America upon her mother’s quest to leave for good. Maya’s character states,

“There’s something about death you can’t escape. But I didn’t cry now over the death of my father. I cried over the death of my childhood; a childhood I’d never get back. And none of it had been my fault. I’d only been a kid.” (Marlenée 36)

Through spirits, a blue genie, tequila, and family, Maya’s past is unraveled. Pushed back in time she faces visions of her abusive, drunk father and his dark history that came before him. The more she learns, the more she forgives and rekindles her love for herself.

While on the farm, Maya spends time painting with the ghost of her childhood best friend Gabriel. He guides her back into creativity which she had forgotten she loved. By painting alongside him, she remembers to love herself and who she once was. Inevitably, she learns she has cancer just as she begins to be curious about the idea of staying. When sitting with her diagnosis she thinks,

“Time was a healer. But I also knew now that the denial and its consequences had indeed taken a toll. At that moment, I was happy to hang it all up in the back of the closet of my mind as if it were just last season’s old dream, so out of style. I’d spend no more time thinking about it and got out of bed.” (Marlenée 36)

What can weigh the most is not the fear of forgetting a memory but the fear that it will be with you forever. What we let sit in our bodies may decide to borrow deep and never leave. Maybe it is the ache in the back of your neck or the heavy drag of your right leg that has yet to find its way to the left or worst of all, the dull ache in your chest that makes you wonder if your heart has any more to give. When painting and seeing Gabriel’s old work, Maya witnesses a younger version of herself come to life. At first she doesn’t recognize the girl as she has been removed from who she once was for a long time. Yet, the more she visits her past self she becomes familiar. By seeing this version of herself, Maya is able to reconcile with her shadowed past. She is able to move forward and consider that instead of returning to California, Mexico might be the most healing place for her.

Reading this novel has reminded me of my drive south to my small hometown. I watch the flat land littered with oak and cactus flash by the windows. I see the train tracks as I enter the town and homes I once knew. My childhood friends appear young again, walking down the street translucent. The Texas sun peering through them like ghosts, and I know they aren’t really there but it sure feels like they are. I see many versions of myself running through the yard I was raised in. Like Maya, we return home for a reason only for the reason to end and wonder why we wanted to leave in the first place. There is something peculiar about growing up to realize there are just as many reasons to stay as there are to go.

I feel there are many more ways this novel can conjure home for the reader. Marlenée does not shy away from stunning and detailed imagery. Even if you aren’t from Mexico or states along its border, the imagery can still trigger your sense of home because of the emotion that is held in it. There is something about the way she describes the landscape, weather, and even food that can be so universal but also deeply personal. Magic is working throughout these pages and I know I can’t be the only one who loves a good spell.

Agave Blues is available from Pelekinesis Press

Em Fullenwider (she/they) is a queer writer/poet born and raised in south Texas who received an MFA in poetry from Texas State University. They are currently working on a full length poetry collection and value building and maintaining community in Texas. You can catch them making coffee and craft or listening to good tunes in their free time. 

Interview with Sarah Fawn Montgomery, Author of Nerve

Following the release of her craft chapbook, Nerve: Unlearning Workshop Ableism to Develop Your Disabled Writing Practice, Sarah Fawn Montgomery spoke with Sundress intern Aylli Cortez about recognizing alternatives to traditional creative writing instruction. With incisive clarity, Sarah presents a multitude of possibilities for accessible spaces and work that empowers rather than depletes.

Nerve is part of Sundress Publications’s 2025 Craft Chaps Series.

Aylli Cortez: From discussing the need to unlearn ableist workshop advice, you then provide alternative ways for readers to develop their practice, design their space, and discover forms that truly work for them. What made you decide to organize the book into these sections?

Sarah Fawn Montgomery: I began with unlearning ableist advice because so many disabled, chronically ill, and neurodivergent writers are encouraged to believe they are somehow failing because they struggle with the writing instruction they have received. Because so many of us are quick to blame ourselves due to internalized ableism, it’s important to dismantle ableist education, pointing out the ways that this kind of instruction not only hinders our work, but hurts our brains and bodies. 

I wanted to point out ways traditional writing workshops are at odds with the disabled experience, as well as common microaggressions disabled writers encounter as advice, because this is the starting ground for many who have endured abuse in the workshop and are looking for ways to remake their practice entirely. This starting point then allowed me to discuss other important and often overlooked aspects of being a disabled writer. Offering ways to design disabled writing spaces, discover disabled forms and structures, and develop strategies for the practical business of being a writer was essential because many disabled writers operate entirely differently than our abled colleagues, yet this is never discussed in writing workshops or common craft advice.

AC: Not only is this book dedicated to crip kin, it also demonstrates what it means to be crip kin—to, as an author, write with your disabled readers and their varied experiences or symptoms in mind. What were your goals while writing for this audience?

SFM: So often disability is ignored or presented as a burden to accommodate. Most craft books and writing workshops assume a universality of experience, as if every writer utilizes creativity using the same methods, education a one-size-fits-all experience. I’m someone who spent many years in traditional writing workshops, pursuing an MFA then a PhD, and eventually achieving tenure as a creative writing professor. While I was able to write using the conventional methods I was taught, they never seemed authentic to my creativity, and, as I write about in Nerve, they came at great physical and mental costs.

This is a shared experience for many disabled writers, so I wanted to center our experiences in this book, framing them not as deficits, but as abundant sources of inspiration and innovation. This is a book that explores the disabled experience but does not suggest that this experience is universal. Instead, I try to provide many ways of writing the disabled, chronically ill, and neurodivergent experience, recognizing that what works for one writer may not work for another, and may not even work for the same writer as their bodies and minds shift with symptoms, abilities, and time. Instead, this is a book about modeling disabled perspectives, offering a variety of ways of being and writing in the world, and encouraging writers to listen to their bodies and minds rather than conventional wisdom. Disabled writers are incredibly innovative—we have to be to survive in an ableist world!—and so I wanted this book to center this innovation so that we might learn to trust our intuition and find the ways that foster our success rather than trying to force myself to follow ableist methods do not actually serve us. 

AC: The book’s generative prompts are direct and specific, inviting readers to write from their own lives and resist non-inclusive expectations. Why did you place these prompts at the end of the book?

SFM: Disabled writers experience radical shifts in our abilities on a day-to-day, sometimes moment-to-moment basis, so it was important to structure this book in a way that responded to this reality. Some writers may have the ability to engage with craft advice, while others may be looking for quick prompts to get them started. By sectioning them out this way, disabled writers can reflect on their abilities in the moment and quickly locate what will best serve them.

Similarly, not every writer engages with writing exercises the same way. For example, as an autistic writer, I have always struggled with direct prompts. I prefer a larger list of possibilities to choose from rather than a direct exercise, which can feel prescriptive, and often renders me unable to write. That’s why I model so many possibilities in the book, offering writers many different ways to do something so that they can choose what works for them and hopefully feel unencumbered by the performance of an exercise, as well as providing a list of generative prompts for writers who prefer direct exercises. Many of these prompts come directly from the advice in the book but are worded in a way that is more specific and offer readers and writers a clear task, while still providing the freedom and flexibility to make it their own.

AC: A recurring tip that resonated with me was the act of reframing rest and reflection as integral parts of the writing process, especially as one’s body and sense of time shift. Could you tell us more about the intention behind these themes of replenishment and regulation as opposed to healing?

SFM: Writing and publishing seem to constantly reinforce productivity, but this is exhausting for anyone for whom writing is not a full-time job, let alone disabled people, who are busy instead with the task of living. Capitalistic hustle culture maintains that products are more important than people, and craft books are no exception, focusing on the writing rather than the writer. But we can’t write well if we don’t live well, so I wanted to reframe rest and reflection as part of the writing process because these are essential for writers yet largely absent from conversations around craft.

In addition, it was important for me to write about replenishment and regulation rather than recovery, because for many of us, recovery simply isn’t an option. I can’t recover from my various disabilities, and while I would certainly like to be in less chronic pain, I would not choose to recover from my neurodivergence even if I could. My disabilities and my neurodivergence are essential parts of my being, essential ways that I process the world, essential components of my creative abilities. Rest and reflection are important strategies that allow us to exist in our bodies and brains in ways that can sustain us. We spend enough time and energy trying to live in an ableist world, so by considering replenishment and regulation as necessary to both disabled and writing life, we can start to consider writing as an act of agency rather than capitalistic production. Narrative is an act of empowerment, but we can’t be empowered if we are hurting. Rest and reflection are essential because we deserve to exist in our bodies and brains in ways that respond to pain and encourage pleasure. 

AC: In response to academic and publishing settings that enforce formal constraints on an already constrained group, what formal choices did you have the most fun with while putting this book together?

SFM: As someone who has spent many years in academic and publishing settings, I took a lot of pleasure in dismantling many of the constraints I was taught and have been required to follow throughout my career. First, the length of this book is a direct pushback against the argument that a longer work is inherently more valuable than a shorter one, that hybridity or chapbooks do not hold as much intellectual weight as full-length books. I wanted the length of this book to surprise readers and ask them to reconsider their beliefs about what constitutes a good craft book, what counts as good craft advice, and who gets to decide.

Similarly, this book puts the reader firmly in the role of expert. Most craft books situate the author and various writers included throughout the text as the experts readers must follow if they want to succeed, but disabled people are experts of our experiences, and so we should be taking advice from our own bodies and brains rather than forcing ourselves to follow the ableist advice of others, no matter their résumés. This book is full of reminders to unlearn various ableist advice you may have learned in school in favor of your own intuition and innovation.

Nerve is available to download for free from Sundress Publications

Sarah Fawn Montgomery in a forest.

Sarah Fawn Montgomery is the author of Nerve: Unlearning Workshop Ableism to Develop Your Disabled Writing Practice. She is also the author of Halfway from Home, Quite Mad: An American Pharma Memoir, and three poetry chapbooks. Abbreviate, a short collection of flash nonfiction, is forthcoming. She is an Associate Professor at Bridgewater State University.

Aylli Cortez is a transmasc Filipino poet and creative writing graduate of Ateneo de Manila University, where he received a DALISAYAN Award in the Arts for Poetry in 2024. His debut chapbook Unabandon was a winner of the Gacha Press Chapbook Contest and will be published in 2025. His work has appeared in VERDANT Journal, en*gendered lit, Bullshit Lit, and HAD, among others. Based in Metro Manila, he is currently a poetry reader for ANMLY and a member of the Ateneo Press Review Crew. Find him online @1159cowboy or visit his website.

Project Bookshelf: Natalie Gardner

A tall, brown bookshelf set against a white wall. It is cluttered with books and trinkets and is decorated for Christmas. There is a Sonic Youth poster on the wall next to it.
My main bookshelf, housing one half of my much-reduced personal library.

A few months ago I moved into my first apartment. What this meant, unfortunately, was that I had to find a new home for most of my books. There was simply no way I was going to fit three shelves and countless floor piles of books into my one-bedroom apartment. Each man kills the thing he loves, I suppose, and my little book collection was my pride and joy. As I was packing up my books for a trip to McKay’s, however, I began to realize that I hadn’t actually read most of these books in years. Somewhere along the way, my love for reading had morphed into sentimentality for the physical objects themselves. Why did I keep the Percy Jackson or Warrior Cats books I loved as a kid? Because seeing them on my shelf made me feel good. I had become someone who owns books because they look good on a shelf. I decided then and there that in the future I would only keep the books I loved, and give away the rest. Unfortunately, this was just the beginning of another cycle of book-hoarding. My shelves, once sparse, are now becoming cluttered once again. In my defense, I have been giving away books that I don’t plan on revisiting, although it appears that the book-bug has bit me once again.

Today I’ll be touring the bookshelf in my living room. It’s a little disorganized right now, so I hope you’ll bear with me. I’ll start with the middle shelf, which started as somewhere to set my things down when I walked in the door. I decorated it with trinkets (and a fake plant, because I’ve never been able to keep real plants alive) until eventually it was too cluttered to be useful as a catch-all shelf. I also decorated the back with stickers; my favorites are the June Henry, No Cure, and Rig Time stickers, all of which are cool bands/artists that played in Knoxville last year.

A brown shelf covered in trinkets. The back of the shelf is covered in stickers.

Also of note: the boxes of Japanese “Peace” cigarettes. These were a gift from a friend who spent a semester in Japan; they make for wonderful party favors. The only things remaining from this shelf’s past life as a catch-all are a pile of laundry tokens and a Campbell’s Soup mug for storing loose change.

Two brown shelves filled with books and trinkets

This shelf used to be organized alphabetically, but that went out the window as soon as I started buying more books. The bottom shelf has now become where I put anything I have recently purchased or read. My favorites from this shelf include Auden’s Selected Poems, Home by Toni Morrison, Secret History II: Stories About Knoxville by Jack Neely, and Grief Slut by Sundress’s own Evelyn Berry. I also use this shelf to store my zines, a hard hat from my time at Amazon, and three stuffed frogs my friend Audrey made.

Seven books on a brown table.

Pictured above are the books I am currently reading or finished over winter break. You can tell which ones are my favorite based on how worn they are. I’ll go into a little more depth on some of these below:

Currently Reading

I’ll refrain from sharing my thoughts on these books (one of which I’ll be discussing soon for Sundress Reads) until I finish them. That being said, this is what I’m currently reading:

  • Yellowface by R.F. Kuang
  • Critique of Modernity by Alain Touraine
  • Amerikaland by Danny Goodman

Recently Read

Rant: The Oral Biography of Buster Casey by Chuck Palahniuk

Rant is the first book I finished in 2025. I’ve been a Chuck Palahniuk girlie for years, but I haven’t gotten a chance to read this one till recently. I enjoyed it, but not as much as Fight Club or Invisible Monsters. It has all the hallmarks of a Palahniuk novel: improbable events, strange characters, and the twist about two-thirds of the way through. And of course, it is incredibly gross, probably grosser than any of his other works. As much as I wanted to love it, Rant was disappointingly formulaic, with none of the dynamism of Palahniuk’s other works to make up for it. I’d still recommend it, but if you aren’t already a Chuck Palahniuk fan, Rant won’t be the book that sells you on him. I’ve chosen to spare you the details here; if this sounds like something you’d enjoy, you should go into it totally blind (trust me).

A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara

A Little Life is another book I have mixed feelings toward. As others have noted, it is beautifully written. It’s impossible to not love Jude and Willem, the main characters of A Little Life. Despite knowing Jude would never get better, and despite knowing this book would break my heart, I couldn’t seem to put it down. If you have the stomach for it, it’s a must-read.

That being said, I have some issues with this book. As convincingly real as they are, every character is, unfortunately, incredibly flat. JB is mean but fun (and changes the most out of anyone, but we don’t see nearly enough of him). Malcolm is stuck-up but generous. Willem, Harold, and Julia are all angels. Jude is possibly the only exception. For a novel about men and their relationships, Yanagihara focuses far too much on Jude. The fact that half of the characters are gay seems to have no bearing on any of their lives. Perhaps Yanagihara is imagining a world where one’s sexuality really does not matter, but I’d like to see aspects of the queer experience portrayed in greater depth in a novel that has been touted as a “gay book.”

I saw someone online say that A Little Life is the emotional equivalent of a Saw movie (which are, in my opinion, really fun movies). That is 100% accurate. I enjoyed A Little Life, but if that’s not for you, you won’t miss anything by skipping this one.

Manhunt by Gretchen Felker-Martin

I read this back in July, but it was so good that I had to revisit it over winter break. Manhunt is about a post-apocalyptic world where a virus has turned all men into zombies, basically. In an interesting twist on the “what if every man suddenly died” genre (a favorite of mine), Manhunt imagines what such a world would be like for transgender people. Like most transgender post-apocalyptic fiction, it’s pretty bleak. Manhunt is violent, heart-wrenching, and something of a transgender power fantasy (which is something I don’t think I’ve ever seen in a novel before). If you’re into thrillers and strange, gender-fucky scenarios, this is definitely the book for you.

Babbit by Sinclair Lewis

Babbit, published in 1922, is an absolute gem that is not talked about nearly enough. Babbit is a comedy-of-manners and biting satire of 1920s political life that follows the titular George Babbit, a successful realtor, and his search for meaning. Despite his wealth and status, Babbit is dissatisfied with the stifling social world of petit-bourgeois strivers in middle America. Combining cutting political satire with a critique of the spiritual emptiness of middle-class life, Sinclair crafted a story that still resonates today. In modern America, George Babbits are everywhere. Walk into a used-car dealership, watch grindset videos on social media, or sit in on a business class, and you’ll find them. They are the upwardly mobile yet discontented middle managers of America: they love highways, McMansions, and cable news, and they would resurrect Ronald Reagan if they could. They are utterly terrifying. Read Babbit.

Brief Interviews With Hideous Men by David Foster Wallace

I think we’re in for a critical reevaluation of David Foster Wallace as a brilliant, but seriously flawed author. I personally have a love-hate relationship with DFW. For all his talk of kindness in This Is Water, there are times when his writing devolves into petty cruelty, and it goes without saying that he is awful at writing women. That being said, I enjoyed Brief Interviews With Hideous Men a lot. I don’t agree with all of his sentiments, and he’s definitely a show-off, but when he hits, he hits. If you’re into weird fiction or works that experiment with form, then I’d definitely recommend this book.

A white woman leaning against a wooden deck railing with the woods behind her. She is wearing a black dress, a green army jacket, and a black scarf, and is looking to the side.

Natalie Gardner is a trans writer hailing from Knoxville, Tennessee. She is currently pursuing a BA in English with a minor in philosophy from the University of Tennessee. She loves transgressive fiction, hiking, and schlocky, B-tier horror movies. When she isn’t working, you can find her haunting the coffee shops of Fort Sanders and DIY shows across East Tennessee. Her work in the field of linguistics can be found in Feedback Review in Second Language.

The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Boys Buy Me Drinks to Watch Me Fall Down by Anna Dickson James

This selection, chosen by managing editor Krista Cox, is from Boys Buy Me Drinks to Watch Me Fall Down by Anna Dickson James (Whiskey Tit 2023).

The Art of Drowning

(excerpt)

The baby bangs a glass ashtray on a glass table. I sit on the husband’s green couch and watch the news. A mother cat raced into a burning building seven times to bring out seven babies. It lost an eye, and the fire melted the mother’s face leaving a gaping, lopsided jaw. The mother cat’s whiskers are off. Fur singed. In my peripheral vision I notice the baby sucking on a copper penny.

The husband bursts through the front door. The walls startle, and plaster falls down in little ticks at his feet. He is carrying a small box. I move to the fireplace and arrange the shells that sit on our mantle.

“Hi,” the husband says.

I look past him towards the open door.

He picks up the copper penny baby.

“Hi, Little One,” he says. And then he frowns.

“What’s in your mouth?” he asks and fishes inside.

He finds the coin. The baby gags. And then coos. The baby moves quickly from gagging to cooing, from crying to laughing.

“Oh my God. A penny,” the husband says and rubs the wet coin on his pants.

“Oh my God,” I say.

“Christ, Emily. You have to be more careful.”

“My name is Elizabeth,” I say under my breath.

“What?” the husband says.

The husband drops the coin into his pocket. I put a shell to my ear and listen to the ocean waves trapped inside.

“I have to be more careful,” I say.

Anna Dickson James earned her MFA from Queens University of Charlotte and is an Associate Professor of English at Garrett College in Deep Creek, Maryland. While she hasn’t lived her stories as written, she found that composing them helped her understand a time in her life when she, despite identifying as a feminist, gave up much of her personal power. Now, as a certified mindset coach she helps small groups of women find their strength and claim their autonomy.

Krista Cox is the Managing Editor of Sundress Publications, The Wardrobe, and Doubleback Review. She’s a poet and editor and currently pursuing her master’s in clinical mental health counseling. Mostly, like everyone, she’s just trying to stay hydrated while she fights the system.

The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: How to Monetize Despair by Lisa Mottolo

This selection, chosen by guest editor Sarah Clark, is from How to Monetize Despair by Lisa Mottolo (Unsolicited Press 2023).

Fatigue is the Light Missing from a Broken Bulb

Fatigue can arrive from avoidance of fatigue, and the only way to cut open the loop is to sharpen a knife with your front teeth. My right front tooth is fake — a replacement after a car accident — and my left front tooth lacks grit. By my age, I should have a notable achievement: a pile of thank you notes, the ability to identify notes on a piano. Instead, I have seeds from my stepmother stuffed into white envelopes that should have been planted in November, and now the ground is dry as a nervous throat, and the sun as red as open poppies. I’m staying inside, anyway, because the lizards are in the trees puffing their throats into brilliant pink displays, and I’m not prepared for the beauty contest. At best, my mating display is my goosebumps raising the sheets at night. I can sew a button, and I can make shrimp etouffee, but I can’t figure out how to tell my partner when I want sex. On vacation, the green parrots with the white bare skin around their eyes blush at each other to initiate whatever parrot sex is, and they’re propped in the trees like heavy puppets. I admire it. How romantic, to have someone control your difficult body. I have overindulged myself and there is no solution. I have prayed under the weight of the moon when there is no book describing a god I can humor. I have found that fatigue is the light missing from a broken bulb, and it’s too dangerous to pick up glass.

Lisa Mottolo is a neurodivergent poet living in Austin, TX. She is the author of the poetry collection How to Monetize Despair (Unsolicited Press, 2023) and she is the Founding Editor at Lit Fox Books. Lisa has attended writing programs at UC Berkeley and Kenyon College, and her work has appeared in Penn Review, The Laurel Review, Diagram, Santa Clara Review, and others. You can find her doing typical poet things like admiring birds, romanticizing the dark, and being overstimulated at AWP.


Sarah Clark is a mad crip genderfuck two-spirit enrolled Nanticoke editor, writer, and cultural consultant. They are Editor-in-Chief and Poetry Editor at ANMLY, Editor-in-Chief at ALOCASIA: a journal of queer plant-based writing, and Editor-in-Chief at beestung. They are an editor on the Bettering American Poetry series, and a current Board member and Assistant Editor at Sundress Publications. They have edited folios for publications including the GLITTERBRAIN folio and a folio on Indigenous & Decolonial Futures & Futurisms at ANMLY. Sarah freelances, and has worked with a number of literary and arts publications and organizations, including the Best of the Net anthology, contemptorary, Curious Specimens, #PoetsResist at Glass Poetry, Apogee Journal, Blackbird, the Paris Review, and elsewhere.

Sundress Academy for the Arts Presents June Poetry Xfit

The Sundress Academy for the Arts is excited to present Poetry Xfit hosted by Alexa White. This generative workshop event will take place on Sunday, June 22nd, 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!

Alexa White is a neurodivergent writer and graduate of the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. As a student, she won the 2022 Bain-Swiggett prize for traditional poetry forms and her poetry and art has appeared in Phoenix, the school’s literary and arts magazine. She lives in Knoxville, her semi-hometown, and is the Creative Director Sundress Academy for the Arts and Associate Editor at Sundress Publications. Alexa takes delight in backroads, bodies of water, and the last few seconds of sunset and she redefines her bedtime nightly.

This event is brought to you in part by grants provided by the Tennessee Arts Commission. 

Sundress Academy for the Arts Presents: “Writing The Chronically Ill Body-Mind”

The Sundress Academy for the Arts is excited to present “Writing the Chronically Ill Body-Mind,” a workshop led by Chisom Okafor on Wednesday, June 18th 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).

In the poems we’ll read and the ones we’ll write, body and mind will meet. Drawing from our own experiences and the experiences of the people we love, we’ll reclaim narratives and break stereotypes surrounding the chronic condition. Our daily medications will become effective weapons and touchstones for description. We’ll wrest poetry from a place of pain, strength, or vulnerability. To help us do this, we’ll be immersing ourselves in a river of poets who explore medical deficiencies or blood conditions: Urvashi Bahuguna, Rachael Boast, Katie Farris, Kayo Chingonyi, Airea D. Matthews, Sarah Nichols, and Ada Limón. Finally, we’ll seek to answer the question: How does the chronically ill body-mind create power and occupy space in an ableist world?

Chisom Okafor is the author of Winged Witnesses (University of Nebraska Press, Forthcoming 2025) and the chapbook, All I Know About a Heavy Heart Is How to Carry It (Jacar Press), described by Jaki Shelton Green as “an interrogation of vulnerability through raw, fierce and unflinching energy.” He has received nominations for the CAAPP Book Prize, the Brunel Prize, Gerald Kraak Prize and Pushcart Prize. He has also received support from the Sundress Academy for the Arts (for the SAFTA residency) and Commonwealth Foundation. He presently lives in Tuscaloosa where he is an MFA in Creative Writing candidate at the University of Alabama.

While there is no fee to participate in this workshop, those who are able and appreciative may make donations directly to Chisom Okafor via Cashapp: $chisom47 or Paypal: kcokafor1@crimson.ua.edu.

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

The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: How to Monetize Despair by Lisa Mottolo

This selection, chosen by guest editor Sarah Clark, is from How to Monetize Despair by Lisa Mottolo (Unsolicited Press 2023).

Don’t Forget to Take Your Heart Medicine

Everything is possible. I am capable. We can seek help from a god we don’t believe exists. I am only bad at things because I believe I am bad at them. Etc. etc. etc. Just one time I’d like to open a self-help book and see a picture of the author at their absolute worst, and have them say, “I know what you’re thinking. What a before picture! But this was this morning.” Or perhaps it could have a photograph of an old, lonely man covered in liver spots, looking out a window as a recreational activity even though there’s a brick wall blocking any view, and the place beside the window is the coldest spot in the house, and it is winter in Chicago, and the man is nursing a hemorrhoid, and by nursing I simply mean he has a donut cushion, not anything crazy, and there’s no pictures on the wall, unless you count the note beside the bathroom mirror that says “don’t forget to take your heart medicine,” and somehow you can tell all of these from the photograph, and the caption simply says, “This is your future even if you try.”

Lisa Mottolo is a neurodivergent poet living in Austin, TX. She is the author of the poetry collection How to Monetize Despair (Unsolicited Press, 2023) and she is the Founding Editor at Lit Fox Books. Lisa has attended writing programs at UC Berkeley and Kenyon College, and her work has appeared in Penn Review, The Laurel Review, Diagram, Santa Clara Review, and others. You can find her doing typical poet things like admiring birds, romanticizing the dark, and being overstimulated at AWP.


Sarah Clark is a mad crip genderfuck two-spirit enrolled Nanticoke editor, writer, and cultural consultant. They are Editor-in-Chief and Poetry Editor at ANMLY, Editor-in-Chief at ALOCASIA: a journal of queer plant-based writing, and Editor-in-Chief at beestung. They are an editor on the Bettering American Poetry series, and a current Board member and Assistant Editor at Sundress Publications. They have edited folios for publications including the GLITTERBRAIN folio and a folio on Indigenous & Decolonial Futures & Futurisms at ANMLY. Sarah freelances, and has worked with a number of literary and arts publications and organizations, including the Best of the Net anthology, contemptorary, Curious Specimens, #PoetsResist at Glass Poetry, Apogee Journal, Blackbird, the Paris Review, and elsewhere.