The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Transitory by Subhaga Crystal Bacon

This selection, chosen by guest editor Valyntina Grenier, is from Transitory by Subhaga Crystal Bacon (BOA Editions Ltd. 2023).

content warning for violence against trans people, gun violence, murder, racial slurs, and racialized violence

Justice: An Acrostic

    (A Catalog of Trans Murders in the First Half of 2020)

Just driving a taxi in Oklahoma was deadly for Dustin Parker, 25.
Using the women’s bathroom killed Alexa, homeless in Puerto Rico—
social media led her killers to her. Yampi Mendez Arocho’s profile—Fuck love—
tells his story; dead at 19. Monika Diamond, honored LGBTQ mothers through the
International Mother of the Year Pageant: misgendered, deadnamed, 34, North Carolina.
Caught with a stolen wig, in Harlem, Lexi, “Ebony” Sutton, 33, loved poetry and
everyone she met. Johanna Metzger, 25, self-taught musician who could play

just about any instrument, stabbed in Maryland. Serena Angelique Vasquez, 31,
using vacation time to visit her friend Layla Pelaez Sánchez, 21, in Puerto Rico, both
shot, their bodies burned. Then Penélope Díaz Ramírez, in the Baymon Correctional Center,
time done in a men’s prison. Nina Pop, in Missouri, 28, stabbed in her apartment.
I love myself now . . . looking at the pictures before I transitioned, Helle Jae O’Regan, 20,
cleaning the barbershop in Texas where she worked; stabbed. Tallahassee police accosted him
even though he had no weapons, said Stop moving, n----r, ending Tony McDade.

June 9, Rem’mie Fells, pulled from the Schuykill, legless; she lived her truth so loud
u could hear her a mile away. An 18-year-old boy and 14-year-old girl led by an adult man
shot Riah Milton, home health worker, 25, in Ohio. Jayne Thompson, shot by police,
troubled in her transition in Colorado. Bail was refused for an 18-year-old student
in Chicago, who went home with Selena Reyes-Hernandez, and learning she was trans
came back later mad as hell, and shot her nine times. Brayla Stone, 17, Arkansas,
evidence of hate crime absent, was left in a car by another teen charged with a prior death.

Just an hour ago, arrested while I’m writing, the man who killed Merci Mack, 22, Dallas,
unless she released a video of them together, shot her multiple times. One of five found dead
since the start of July: Shaki Peters, 32, Amite, Louisiana; Bree Black, 27, July 3, shot
too. Summer Taylor, white, non-binary killed after a car drove into a crowd of protestors
in Seattle, Washington, on July 4 at the Black Femme March, not yet ruled a homicide, because
driving a car into a group of protestors, on Independence Day, is apparently
excusable or—what? Manslaughter?—binary loophole that says: not woman, not murder.

Subhaga Crystal Bacon is a Queer poet living in rural northcentral Washington on unceded Methow land. She is the author of four collections of poetry. Her latest book, Transitory, is the recipient of the Isabella Gardner Award for Poetry, from BOA Editions, and was listed in the Library Journal’s list of Books to Read in 2023. She’s the author of Surrender of Water in Hidden Places, 2023, winner of the Red Flag Poetry Chapbook Prize, Blue Hunger, Methow Press, 2020, and Elegy with a Glass of Whiskey, winner of the A. Poulin New Poetry America Prize, BOA Editions, 2004. A Pushcart and Best of the Net nominee, she’s a teaching artist working in schools and libraries with youth and adults, as well as private students. Her work appears in a variety of print and online journals including The Diode Poetry Journal, The Bellevue Literary Review, Indianapolis Review, Ghost City Review and others.

Valyntina Grenier is a multi-genre eco artist living with her wife in Tucson, AZ. She works with paint, ink, Neon, encaustic medium, recycled or repurposed materials and words.  She is the author of Honeymoon Shoes and the chapbooks, Fever Dream/ Take Heart and In Our Now. You’ll find her work in, Beyond Queer Words, Genre: Urban Arts, Impermanent Earth, Lana Turner, The Journal, Querencia, and The Wardrobe. Find her at valyntinagrenier.com or Insta @valyntinagrenier.

The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Transitory by Subhaga Crystal Bacon

This selection, chosen by guest editor Valyntina Grenier, is from Transitory by Subhaga Crystal Bacon (BOA Editions Ltd. 2023).

content warning for transphobia and gun violence

Yampi Mendez Arocho, 19, Moca, Puerto Rico, March 5

Fuck love; I don’t believe in it anymore.

The day before you were killed, Yampi, this is what you wrote.
Now I’m left wondering, is that what the world gave you?

There’s not enough to answer the questions:

		The woman who assaulted you five hours before?
		Did you go home for help from your mother,
		who reported the assault to the police?

Then you were dead.

		This we know: shot twice in the face and twice in the back
		in the community playground, in Moca, where you grew up.

The day before you were shot, a selfie in front of a mirror—

		There’s a blue-eyed tiger tattooed on the back of your left hand,
		a cross on your right forearm. Your shoulders are wide
		under a turquoise shirt, diagonal lines of red flamingos

		all rest on one leg. The nails on your slender fingers
		are long. A thin rectangular pendant hangs on silver chain
		down your chest. Your face is narrow, fox like.

Deeply set shadowed eyes look at your phone.

Flamingos represent an open heart, balance, grace.
Yampi, where is your gaze?

Subhaga Crystal Bacon is a Queer poet living in rural northcentral Washington on unceded Methow land. She is the author of four collections of poetry. Her latest book, Transitory, is the recipient of the Isabella Gardner Award for Poetry, from BOA Editions, and was listed in the Library Journal’s list of Books to Read in 2023. She’s the author of Surrender of Water in Hidden Places, 2023, winner of the Red Flag Poetry Chapbook Prize, Blue Hunger, Methow Press, 2020, and Elegy with a Glass of Whiskey, winner of the A. Poulin New Poetry America Prize, BOA Editions, 2004. A Pushcart and Best of the Net nominee, she’s a teaching artist working in schools and libraries with youth and adults, as well as private students. Her work appears in a variety of print and online journals including The Diode Poetry Journal, The Bellevue Literary Review, Indianapolis Review, Ghost City Review and others.

Valyntina Grenier is a multi-genre eco artist living with her wife in Tucson, AZ. She works with paint, ink, Neon, encaustic medium, recycled or repurposed materials and words.  She is the author of Honeymoon Shoes and the chapbooks, Fever Dream/ Take Heart and In Our Now. You’ll find her work in, Beyond Queer Words, Genre: Urban Arts, Impermanent Earth, Lana Turner, The Journal, Querencia, and The Wardrobe. Find her at valyntinagrenier.com or Insta @valyntinagrenier.

The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Transitory by Subhaga Crystal Bacon

This selection, chosen by guest editor Valyntina Grenier, is from Transitory by Subhaga Crystal Bacon (BOA Editions Ltd. 2023).

I Have Room for You in Me: A Litany

For the handsome trans-woman and cis-gender wife,
for the suit and tie and heels, for the skirt and corset
and beard, I have room. No one can say a life is not right.
I have room for you in me. For the one whose father

loved her like a son until she became one, I have room
for you in me. For those who claim their own names,
break free from the limited born-as cocoon, for the one
with the wide-hipped sashay, big hands smoothing her dress,

I have room for you in me.

For him whose voice rings high, whose chest bears scars
under hair and ink, I have room. For the one who wears
their self-made clothes and hand-painted shoes, not trying to pass,
I have room for you in me. For the pregnant man, and woman father,

I have room for you in me. For the sex worker’s food
and rent. For the elderly boy’s sparse whiskers and soft eyes.
For the statuesque matron, the broad beamed man; for your lives
and your loves and your rights, I have room.

I have room for you in me.

Subhaga Crystal Bacon is a Queer poet living in rural northcentral Washington on unceded Methow land. She is the author of four collections of poetry. Her latest book, Transitory, is the recipient of the Isabella Gardner Award for Poetry, from BOA Editions, and was listed in the Library Journal’s list of Books to Read in 2023. She’s the author of Surrender of Water in Hidden Places, 2023, winner of the Red Flag Poetry Chapbook Prize, Blue Hunger, Methow Press, 2020, and Elegy with a Glass of Whiskey, winner of the A. Poulin New Poetry America Prize, BOA Editions, 2004. A Pushcart and Best of the Net nominee, she’s a teaching artist working in schools and libraries with youth and adults, as well as private students. Her work appears in a variety of print and online journals including The Diode Poetry Journal, The Bellevue Literary Review, Indianapolis Review, Ghost City Review and others.

Valyntina Grenier is a multi-genre eco artist living with her wife in Tucson, AZ. She works with paint, ink, Neon, encaustic medium, recycled or repurposed materials and words.  She is the author of Honeymoon Shoes and the chapbooks, Fever Dream/ Take Heart and In Our Now. You’ll find her work in, Beyond Queer Words, Genre: Urban Arts, Impermanent Earth, Lana Turner, The Journal, Querencia, and The Wardrobe. Find her at valyntinagrenier.com or Insta @valyntinagrenier.

The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: VOLO by Nathalie Handal

This selection, chosen by guest editor Valyntina Grenier, is from VOLO by Nathalie Handal (Diode Editions 2021).

Téssera

II
Aletheia

[ 4 ]
They ignore us
as if we aren’t part of history,

they walk past us
as if we didn’t show them

the moon, the sun,
and the soul,

as if we aren’t the most sensual
world in the world,

as if we don’t teach them
Regulus is the brightest star in Leo.

Yet whatever they try
we still stand,

we stand we stand we stand
and sing with a bassoon and bang.

Nathalie Handal was raised in Latin America, France and the Middle East, and educated in the United States, United Kingdom and Asia. Her recent poetry books include Life in A Country Album, the flash collection The Republics, the critically acclaimed Poet in Andalucía, and Love and Strange Horses. She is the author of eight plays, editor of two anthologies, and her flash essays and creative nonfiction have appeared in Vanity Fair, Guernica Magazine, The Guardian, The New York Times, The Nation, The Irish Times, among others. Handal is the recipient of awards from the PEN Foundation, the Lannan Foundation, Centro Andaluz de las Letras, Fondazione di Venezia, among others. She is Associate Professor of Practice in Literature & Creative Writing at New York University–AD, and writes the literary travel column ‘The City and the Writer’ for Words without Borders magazine.

Valyntina Grenier is a multi-genre eco artist living with her wife in Tucson, AZ. She works with paint, ink, Neon, encaustic medium, recycled or repurposed materials and words.  She is the author of Honeymoon Shoes and the chapbooks, Fever Dream/ Take Heart and In Our Now. You’ll find her work in, Beyond Queer Words, Genre: Urban Arts, Impermanent Earth, Lana Turner, The Journal, Querencia, and The Wardrobe. Find her at valyntinagrenier.com or Insta @valyntinagrenier.

The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: VOLO by Nathalie Handal

This selection, chosen by guest editor Valyntina Grenier, is from VOLO by Nathalie Handal (Diode Editions 2021).

Téssera

I
The Walls Have Not Fallen

for Bethlehem 1948
from New York via London 2020

[ 4 ]
Pompeii taught us nothing
but told us everything:

That all can erupt
and kill us

but we will
survive

in the city’s
houses, paintings, objects.

But what did the women say
of the hundred hours of harm?

What did the ancient Roman port
near my beloved Naples say

about the city’s faint music
that couldn’t be interrupted?

Should we ask a Pharaoh,
secret keeper or dreamer?

Who dies?
Who gets to survive?

When lips are drying
will the rain keep her exhalations,

like a necklace of water
around the sun?

Will we all fall silent
suddenly,

and wonder:
Had we heard the sounds

of the seagull?
When we walked away

did the sun’s rays on the bench
bend the beauty of the world?

Nathalie Handal was raised in Latin America, France and the Middle East, and educated in the United States, United Kingdom and Asia. Her recent poetry books include Life in A Country Album, the flash collection The Republics, the critically acclaimed Poet in Andalucía, and Love and Strange Horses. She is the author of eight plays, editor of two anthologies, and her flash essays and creative nonfiction have appeared in Vanity Fair, Guernica Magazine, The Guardian, The New York Times, The Nation, The Irish Times, among others. Handal is the recipient of awards from the PEN Foundation, the Lannan Foundation, Centro Andaluz de las Letras, Fondazione di Venezia, among others. She is Associate Professor of Practice in Literature & Creative Writing at New York University–AD, and writes the literary travel column ‘The City and the Writer’ for Words without Borders magazine.

Valyntina Grenier is a multi-genre eco artist living with her wife in Tucson, AZ. She works with paint, ink, Neon, encaustic medium, recycled or repurposed materials and words.  She is the author of Honeymoon Shoes and the chapbooks, Fever Dream/ Take Heart and In Our Now. You’ll find her work in, Beyond Queer Words, Genre: Urban Arts, Impermanent Earth, Lana Turner, The Journal, Querencia, and The Wardrobe. Find her at valyntinagrenier.com or Insta @valyntinagrenier.

The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: VOLO by Nathalie Handal

This selection, chosen by guest editor Valyntina Grenier, is from VOLO by Nathalie Handal (Diode Editions 2021).

Téssera

II
Aletheia

[ 2 ]
Suddenly, we remember
time is slanted inside

like statues tilted
after an earthquake.

Suddenly, Ophelia and Sappho
show us our sacred texts,

tell us to take our desires
to different cities

to surrender to them
differently—

how else can
we liberate

what’s been burning
for centuries?

What is real in the world?
What do we find

at the edge of the last gaze
of the heart?

What is divine in our bodies,
what is lost?

Nathalie Handal was raised in Latin America, France and the Middle East, and educated in the United States, United Kingdom and Asia. Her recent poetry books include Life in A Country Album, the flash collection The Republics, the critically acclaimed Poet in Andalucía, and Love and Strange Horses. She is the author of eight plays, editor of two anthologies, and her flash essays and creative nonfiction have appeared in Vanity Fair, Guernica Magazine, The Guardian, The New York Times, The Nation, The Irish Times, among others. Handal is the recipient of awards from the PEN Foundation, the Lannan Foundation, Centro Andaluz de las Letras, Fondazione di Venezia, among others. She is Associate Professor of Practice in Literature & Creative Writing at New York University–AD, and writes the literary travel column ‘The City and the Writer’ for Words without Borders magazine.

Valyntina Grenier is a multi-genre eco artist living with her wife in Tucson, AZ. She works with paint, ink, Neon, encaustic medium, recycled or repurposed materials and words.  She is the author of Honeymoon Shoes and the chapbooks, Fever Dream/ Take Heart and In Our Now. You’ll find her work in, Beyond Queer Words, Genre: Urban Arts, Impermanent Earth, Lana Turner, The Journal, Querencia, and The Wardrobe. Find her at valyntinagrenier.com or Insta @valyntinagrenier.

The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: VOLO by Nathalie Handal

This selection, chosen by guest editor Valyntina Grenier, is from VOLO by Nathalie Handal (Diode Editions 2021).

Téssera

IV
Voyages

[ 3 ]
I look at the ruins of Babel,
languages lying in morsels.

I look at the ruins of Rome,
its columns and Colosseum.

I move to Piraeus,
Athens to Kyoto, Kolkata to Delphi,

And ask, Where are the poems? 

Only they can capture such splendor.

But I’m met with glares on faces
that say, Poets are in saloons,

in streets, in solitude,
no one reads poetry anymore.

Then an eclipse or earthquake,
and we search for poems—

their quiet motion
moves us

like a great and sudden wind,
like a wild and soft whisper,

poems divine and alive,
Their repetitions

keep us moving,
explain to us histories,

wars and nature.
Poems, a long paper

covering the world
like a great music

composed together
to tell us

that love is all love needs.
We forget poems all over again

but poems continue to sing
to us, and wait for us to sing.

Nathalie Handal was raised in Latin America, France and the Middle East, and educated in the United States, United Kingdom and Asia. Her recent poetry books include Life in A Country Album, the flash collection The Republics, the critically acclaimed Poet in Andalucía, and Love and Strange Horses. She is the author of eight plays, editor of two anthologies, and her flash essays and creative nonfiction have appeared in Vanity Fair, Guernica Magazine, The Guardian, The New York Times, The Nation, The Irish Times, among others. Handal is the recipient of awards from the PEN Foundation, the Lannan Foundation, Centro Andaluz de las Letras, Fondazione di Venezia, among others. She is Associate Professor of Practice in Literature & Creative Writing at New York University–AD, and writes the literary travel column ‘The City and the Writer’ for Words without Borders magazine.

Valyntina Grenier is a multi-genre eco artist living with her wife in Tucson, AZ. She works with paint, ink, Neon, encaustic medium, recycled or repurposed materials and words.  She is the author of Honeymoon Shoes and the chapbooks, Fever Dream/ Take Heart and In Our Now. You’ll find her work in, Beyond Queer Words, Genre: Urban Arts, Impermanent Earth, Lana Turner, The Journal, Querencia, and The Wardrobe. Find her at valyntinagrenier.com or Insta @valyntinagrenier.

The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: VOLO by Nathalie Handal

This selection, chosen by guest editor Valyntina Grenier, is from VOLO by Nathalie Handal (Diode Editions 2021).

Téssera

I
The Walls Have Not Fallen

for Bethlehem 1948
from New York via London 2020

[ 1 ]
I look at the way this silence
moves the streets,

the way we leave ourselves
in others,

the way our shadows
come back for more solitude,

the way death holds
death hostage

even when it begs
to walk down the lonesome road.

Maybe we need
to empty our souls

to find those
thinking of us

in memories we forgot,
maybe we will see

darkness healing
as ships land on pale shores,

or maybe we will fall into the sea,
forgetting that love

is a longer voyage
than life.

Nathalie Handal was raised in Latin America, France and the Middle East, and educated in the United States, United Kingdom and Asia. Her recent poetry books include Life in A Country Album, the flash collection The Republics, the critically acclaimed Poet in Andalucía, and Love and Strange Horses. She is the author of eight plays, editor of two anthologies, and her flash essays and creative nonfiction have appeared in Vanity Fair, Guernica Magazine, The Guardian, The New York Times, The Nation, The Irish Times, among others. Handal is the recipient of awards from the PEN Foundation, the Lannan Foundation, Centro Andaluz de las Letras, Fondazione di Venezia, among others. She is Associate Professor of Practice in Literature & Creative Writing at New York University–AD, and writes the literary travel column ‘The City and the Writer’ for Words without Borders magazine.

Valyntina Grenier is a multi-genre eco artist living with her wife in Tucson, AZ. She works with paint, ink, Neon, encaustic medium, recycled or repurposed materials and words.  She is the author of Honeymoon Shoes and the chapbooks, Fever Dream/ Take Heart and In Our Now. You’ll find her work in, Beyond Queer Words, Genre: Urban Arts, Impermanent Earth, Lana Turner, The Journal, Querencia, and The Wardrobe. Find her at valyntinagrenier.com or Insta @valyntinagrenier.

The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: I Was One of My Memories by Laurie Blauner

This selection, chosen by guest editor Valyntina Grenier, is from I Was One of My Memories by Laurie Blauner (Pank Books 2021).

Gender Instructions

     My heart is not violent.
     Dig a hole and fill it with a body of water.
     I speak to myself during dance class.
     Carve a man’s body that spills everywhere.
     I was created long ago as a sentence. Bone and skin.
     Move your genitals this way, then the other way.
     I’m disappearing into a soft body.
     I’m still here.

Laurie Blauner is the author of eight books of poetry, five novels, and a hybrid non-fiction book called I Was One of My Memories that won PANK’s CNF Book Award. Her work has appeared in Tupelo Quarterly, Georgia Review, Superstition Review, The Nation, The New Republic, Poetry, and many other magazines.


Valyntina Grenier is a multi-genre eco artist living with her wife in Tucson, AZ. She works with paint, ink, Neon, encaustic medium, recycled or repurposed materials and words.  She is the author of Honeymoon Shoes and the chapbooks, Fever Dream/ Take Heart and In Our Now. You’ll find her work in, Beyond Queer Words, Genre: Urban Arts, Impermanent Earth, Lana Turner, The Journal, Querencia, and The Wardrobe. Find her at valyntinagrenier.com or Insta @valyntinagrenier.

The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: I Was One of My Memories by Laurie Blauner

This selection, chosen by guest editor Valyntina Grenier, is from I Was One of My Memories by Laurie Blauner (Pank Books 2021).

Little White Lies

     “Lie, lie, lie,” my mother told me to make myself younger, when I was already
young. When I lived with her, she wanted to be more appealing to men. I never
had children, but if I had, I doubt I would ask them to do this. I would hope I
had better things to do.
     There are political lies, no signs of global warming, the pandemic, weapons
of mass destruction, other candidates, fascist and white supremist hate groups,
sleeping with women, racial inequality, birthplace disparities, money, even the size
of an audience. Peeking below the surface can result in justice.
     Do we lie more about what we don’t understand? Or about what we do
understand? Is understanding the lie?

Laurie Blauner is the author of eight books of poetry, five novels, and a hybrid non-fiction book called I Was One of My Memories that won PANK’s CNF Book Award. Her work has appeared in Tupelo Quarterly, Georgia Review, Superstition Review, The Nation, The New Republic, Poetry, and many other magazines.


Valyntina Grenier is a multi-genre eco artist living with her wife in Tucson, AZ. She works with paint, ink, Neon, encaustic medium, recycled or repurposed materials and words.  She is the author of Honeymoon Shoes and the chapbooks, Fever Dream/ Take Heart and In Our Now. You’ll find her work in, Beyond Queer Words, Genre: Urban Arts, Impermanent Earth, Lana Turner, The Journal, Querencia, and The Wardrobe. Find her at valyntinagrenier.com or Insta @valyntinagrenier.