Tag: The Wardrobe

The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Familiar by Luiza Flynn-Goodlett

This feature, chosen by Guest Editor Catherine Garbinsky, is from Familiar by Luiza Flynn-Goodlett (Madhouse Press 2024).

When least expected,

magic twines legs like

a cat. Or was it always

here, and by averting

eyes from the shadow,

I missed its shine? Or

did A strike it from my

flint-like limbs? Either

way,21 its song fills every

room, and I only have

to notice what catches

in my throat when

I lift voice in return.

____________
21“It is not that something different is seen, but that one
sees differently. It is as though the spatial act of seeing were
changed by a new dimension,” Carl Jung.

Luiza Flynn-Goodlett (she/her) is the author of Mud in Our Mouths (Northwestern University Press, 2025) and Look Alive (Cowles Poetry Book Prize, Southeast Missouri State University Press, 2021), along with numerous chapbooks, most recently Lossland (forthcoming from Black Lawrence Press). Her poetry can be found in Ninth Letter, swamp pink, Poetry Northwest, and
elsewhere. She serves as a poetry editor for the Whiting Award–winning LGBTQIA2S+ literary journal and press Foglifter. She was raised in the wilds of Tennessee and now lives in the SF Bay Area with her wife and rescue dog.

Catherine Garbinsky (she/they) is a writer living in Knoxville, Tennessee. They received their MFA in Poetry from the University of Tennessee-Knoxville, where they are now a PhD candidate. Catherine’s poems have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. She has written two chapbooks: All Spells Are Strong Here (Ghost City Press, 2018) and Even Curses End (Animal Heart Press, 2019), and her work has been featured in Yes Poetry, Coffin Bell Journal, Cream City Review, and elsewhere. 


The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Familiar by Luiza Flynn-Goodlett

This feature, chosen by Guest Editor Catherine Garbinsky, is from Familiar by Luiza Flynn-Goodlett (Madhouse Press 2024).

The hag stands in moonlight

torn by its passage through

blinds. Resisting the urge to

wake A, who’ll say no one’s

here, I pull covers tighter as

she explains, she’s traveling

to when that boy led us into

the woods, hammered agate

until its bright guts showed.

She’ll stop him. I move to take

her hand18—one who was there,

though we barely remember,19

____________
18 “The ‘night sea journey’ is the journey into the parts of ourselves
that are split off, disavowed, unknown, unwanted, cast out, and exiled
to the various subterranean worlds of consciousness,” Stephen Cope.
19 “The more adrenaline you secrete, the more precise your memory
will be. But that is true only up to a certain point. Confronted with
horror—especially the horror of ‘unescapable shock’—this system
becomes overwhelmed and breaks down.”





but she steps back, just asks,

should she keep trying? I nod.

Luiza Flynn-Goodlett (she/her) is the author of Mud in Our Mouths (Northwestern University Press, 2025) and Look Alive (Cowles Poetry Book Prize, Southeast Missouri State University Press, 2021), along with numerous chapbooks, most recently Lossland (forthcoming from Black Lawrence Press). Her poetry can be found in Ninth Letter, swamp pink, Poetry Northwest, and
elsewhere. She serves as a poetry editor for the Whiting Award–winning LGBTQIA2S+ literary journal and press Foglifter. She was raised in the wilds of Tennessee and now lives in the SF Bay Area with her wife and rescue dog.

Catherine Garbinsky (she/they) is a writer living in Knoxville, Tennessee. They received their MFA in Poetry from the University of Tennessee-Knoxville, where they are now a PhD candidate. Catherine’s poems have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. She has written two chapbooks: All Spells Are Strong Here (Ghost City Press, 2018) and Even Curses End (Animal Heart Press, 2019), and her work has been featured in Yes Poetry, Coffin Bell Journal, Cream City Review, and elsewhere. 


The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Familiar by Luiza Flynn-Goodlett

This feature, chosen by Guest Editor Catherine Garbinsky, is from Familiar by Luiza Flynn-Goodlett (Madhouse Press 2024).

I dream a campfire ringed

with logs behind a now

derelict playground, and

at my feet, patent leather

shoes, curl of satin, child’s

dress.15 I lower each, watch

flames lick, obscure. Then

I see a woman, a stranger,

at the edge of the clearing.

But she’s gone when I look

again, so I claw ash to find

it all unburned—gleaming

leather, ribbon in a bow,

____________
15 “Dissociation is the essence of trauma. The overwhelming
experience is split off and fragmented, so that the emotions, sounds,
images, thoughts, and physical sensations related to the trauma take on
a life of their own.”





dress folded just as mom

set it out that day. Hands

wet now with tar, I wipe,

but it won’t budge.16 Then,

all at once, the forest starts

singing—cicada, owl, wind—

as I drag palms down my

nightgown, spreading dark.






____________
16 “We are dealing with a dual reality, the reality of the
relatively secure and predictable present that lives side by side
with a ruinous, ever-present past.”

Luiza Flynn-Goodlett (she/her) is the author of Mud in Our Mouths (Northwestern University Press, 2025) and Look Alive (Cowles Poetry Book Prize, Southeast Missouri State University Press, 2021), along with numerous chapbooks, most recently Lossland (forthcoming from Black Lawrence Press). Her poetry can be found in Ninth Letter, swamp pink, Poetry Northwest, and
elsewhere. She serves as a poetry editor for the Whiting Award–winning LGBTQIA2S+ literary journal and press Foglifter. She was raised in the wilds of Tennessee and now lives in the SF Bay Area with her wife and rescue dog.

Catherine Garbinsky (she/they) is a writer living in Knoxville, Tennessee. They received their MFA in Poetry from the University of Tennessee-Knoxville, where they are now a PhD candidate. Catherine’s poems have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. She has written two chapbooks: All Spells Are Strong Here (Ghost City Press, 2018) and Even Curses End (Animal Heart Press, 2019), and her work has been featured in Yes Poetry, Coffin Bell Journal, Cream City Review, and elsewhere. 


The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Familiar by Luiza Flynn-Goodlett

This feature, chosen by Guest Editor Catherine Garbinsky, is from Familiar by Luiza Flynn-Goodlett (Madhouse Press 2024).

Not again, I think as I wake into

dream—braid dangling like a rat

snake over my face—scream9 and

scoot to the back of the bunk. My

poor roommate (spared until now)

screams too as the hag mutters what

sounds like apologies—hard to tell

over all the screaming—then, with

a gesture of long fingers, disappears.







____________
9 “Under extreme conditions people may scream obscenities,
call for their mothers, howl in terror, or simply shut down.”

Luiza Flynn-Goodlett (she/her) is the author of Mud in Our Mouths (Northwestern University Press, 2025) and Look Alive (Cowles Poetry Book Prize, Southeast Missouri State University Press, 2021), along with numerous chapbooks, most recently Lossland (forthcoming from Black Lawrence Press). Her poetry can be found in Ninth Letter, swamp pink, Poetry Northwest, and
elsewhere. She serves as a poetry editor for the Whiting Award–winning LGBTQIA2S+ literary journal and press Foglifter. She was raised in the wilds of Tennessee and now lives in the SF Bay Area with her wife and rescue dog.

Catherine Garbinsky (she/they) is a writer living in Knoxville, Tennessee. They received their MFA in Poetry from the University of Tennessee-Knoxville, where they are now a PhD candidate. Catherine’s poems have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. She has written two chapbooks: All Spells Are Strong Here (Ghost City Press, 2018) and Even Curses End (Animal Heart Press, 2019), and her work has been featured in Yes Poetry, Coffin Bell Journal, Cream City Review, and elsewhere. 


The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Familiar by Luiza Flynn-Goodlett

This feature, chosen by Guest Editor Catherine Garbinsky, is from Familiar by Luiza Flynn-Goodlett (Madhouse Press 2024).

I dream a night forest4 —
leaves lit by the moon
as bats flit above—mud
splattered calves burn,
but a light glows ahead,
so I follow until I stand
at the edge of a clearing,
watch myself—younger,
but clearly me—crouch
before a fire, feed clothes
worn that day to flames.
For a moment, her eyes
flick up, and she sees us5—
mice in glue, still stuck
here where it happened.







____________
4 “Night is coming, when no one has the power to work,” John
9:1–17.
5 “My delicate firebrand-darlings,” Hopkins, Discovery of Witches.

Luiza Flynn-Goodlett (she/her) is the author of Mud in Our Mouths (Northwestern University Press, 2025) and Look Alive (Cowles Poetry Book Prize, Southeast Missouri State University Press, 2021), along with numerous chapbooks, most recently Lossland (forthcoming from Black Lawrence Press). Her poetry can be found in Ninth Letter, swamp pink, Poetry Northwest, and
elsewhere. She serves as a poetry editor for the Whiting Award–winning LGBTQIA2S+ literary journal and press Foglifter. She was raised in the wilds of Tennessee and now lives in the SF Bay Area with her wife and rescue dog.

Catherine Garbinsky (she/they) is a writer living in Knoxville, Tennessee. They received their MFA in Poetry from the University of Tennessee-Knoxville, where they are now a PhD candidate. Catherine’s poems have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. She has written two chapbooks: All Spells Are Strong Here (Ghost City Press, 2018) and Even Curses End (Animal Heart Press, 2019), and her work has been featured in Yes Poetry, Coffin Bell Journal, Cream City Review, and elsewhere. 


The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Otherlight by Jill Mceldowney

This feature, chosen by Guest Editor Catherine Garbinsky, is from Otherlight by Jill Mceldowney (YesYes Books 2023).

I WOULD SAY

I wake up still
thinking you are alive—
my body gets used to that fog
as if you, as if the dead are nothing more
than bones to the body. That pain is deep—
I will go deeper.
I stayed awake for months after you—
waiting
for your call
come back—people like you don’t just disappear.
I would’ve waited forever
in the solstice cold, up
in the air, mountainside of disbelief if only to hear you say
my name.
Before you, I could not understand pain
but I know it now and it sounds supernatural,
like beams of light
smashed across the small of my back. Sleep and never
sleep again
where did you find yourself when you finally woke?





Did it hurt—?
I mean is death anything like living?
Does it remind you of home?
I hope where you are is vast, real,
impossible—
a better oblivion,
more sky—
I hope where you are is nothing
like home.

Jill Mceldowney (she/her) is the author of the full-length collections Alydar (YesYes Books, forthcoming 2026) and Otherlight (YesYes Books 2023), winner of a North American Book Award. She is found and editor of Madhouse Press. She is a recipient of a grant from the Helene Wurlitzer Foundation of New Mexico. Her previously published word can be found in publications such as The Academy of American Poets, Prairie Schooner, Tupelo Quarterly, Frontier, Muzzle, and other notable publications.

Catherine Garbinsky (she/they) is a writer living in Knoxville, Tennessee. They received their MFA in Poetry from the University of Tennessee-Knoxville, where they are now a PhD candidate. Catherine’s poems have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. She has written two chapbooks: All Spells Are Strong Here (Ghost City Press, 2018) and Even Curses End (Animal Heart Press, 2019), and her work has been featured in Yes Poetry, Coffin Bell Journal, Cream City Review, and elsewhere. 


The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Otherlight by Jill Mceldowney

This feature, chosen by Guest Editor Catherine Garbinsky, is from Otherlight by Jill Mceldowney (YesYes Books 2023).

DYNAMITE

A ghost leaves your body and never returns—
this is a lie.

A person has to earn
the right to forget.

What if, from now on,
I subscribe to that specific turn-of-the-century-belief
that illness is caused by spirits—

use this to explain why
I tried to protect your body with mine: My life for yours,
remember?
No matter where that promise would have taken me
I would’ve made it. I would’ve

slept forever for you to live.
I’m sorry I lived

through what you could not.
Do you remember the earth before this earth,

your birthplace on fire?
Now my body is kindling owned by your ghost. If I become anything
let there be no stopping it

let there be grace in living thigh to thigh with ghosts.



That’s the thing about using ghosts as explanations for illness:
you hold them close enough and they become a part of you,

long enough and you forget they are there, they become an apology,
they rip the roof off of the sky.

Jill Mceldowney (she/her) is the author of the full-length collections Alydar (YesYes Books, forthcoming 2026) and Otherlight (YesYes Books 2023), winner of a North American Book Award. She is found and editor of Madhouse Press. She is a recipient of a grant from the Helene Wurlitzer Foundation of New Mexico. Her previously published word can be found in publications such as The Academy of American Poets, Prairie Schooner, Tupelo Quarterly, Frontier, Muzzle, and other notable publications.

Catherine Garbinsky (she/they) is a writer living in Knoxville, Tennessee. They received their MFA in Poetry from the University of Tennessee-Knoxville, where they are now a PhD candidate. Catherine’s poems have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. She has written two chapbooks: All Spells Are Strong Here (Ghost City Press, 2018) and Even Curses End (Animal Heart Press, 2019), and her work has been featured in Yes Poetry, Coffin Bell Journal, Cream City Review, and elsewhere. 


The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Otherlight by Jill Mceldowney

This feature, chosen by Guest Editor Catherine Garbinsky, is from Otherlight by Jill Mceldowney (YesYes Books 2023).

TELEPHONE

I am beginning to view the body as a well I could shout Hello Hello into
call it a mistake hang up out of alarm because tell me what you thought
you were doing answering when you’ve been dead five whole years? And is
it really you? How have you kept alive? What have you grown down
there in the gloom of after like salt? Perhaps I should say mine the body
is a salt mine And I never call but you answer anyway Was it ever
cheerful? The sound called ringing Don’t talk to me please
don’t tell me I need you disoriented buried alive clawing your way
up from the mouth of a cave to show me the way home and tell me what
does this even mean?

Tell me to spread open my palms cut another deck of cards face up these
lines arch me far from home I cannot stop from coming my fate are
you what brings me here my annihilating angel? Everyone knows that
when you die you learn everything so tell me about my life Tell me
about my sun line my one day call me bitch I love that hands-on
unmaking and making I must impossibly bloom forth that tallest mountain
I dial the dead and you answer Hand me the telephone give me your ice
your hour of starving your naked promise me I will die dark haired
and one day you and I will burn buildings together for warmth Speak to
me Tell me about me I want to be believed

Jill Mceldowney (she/her) is the author of the full-length collections Alydar (YesYes Books, forthcoming 2026) and Otherlight (YesYes Books 2023), winner of a North American Book Award. She is found and editor of Madhouse Press. She is a recipient of a grant from the Helene Wurlitzer Foundation of New Mexico. Her previously published word can be found in publications such as The Academy of American Poets, Prairie Schooner, Tupelo Quarterly, Frontier, Muzzle, and other notable publications.

Catherine Garbinsky (she/they) is a writer living in Knoxville, Tennessee. They received their MFA in Poetry from the University of Tennessee-Knoxville, where they are now a PhD candidate. Catherine’s poems have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. She has written two chapbooks: All Spells Are Strong Here (Ghost City Press, 2018) and Even Curses End (Animal Heart Press, 2019), and her work has been featured in Yes Poetry, Coffin Bell Journal, Cream City Review, and elsewhere. 


The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Otherlight by Jill Mceldowney

This feature, chosen by Guest Editor Catherine Garbinsky, is from Otherlight by Jill Mceldowney (YesYes Books 2023).

DREAM TREE

We are playing that child’s game of guess what I’m saying underwater,

a game of who can stay
submerged longest,
             who can listen longest to the voices of the dead.

You say: Give me your watch. I’ll time you. How long can you hold—?

And how precious is time,
how long wine waits to peak,
how long do we have
              before time fills our love with blood?

I look up at you across the swimming pool and I should not be afraid,
              I can see the bottom of the water
and it is safe and blue and clear
but already you are beginning to blur.

Time takes everything.
Wait with me, wait
for fingers of ice to climb you
the last possible moment
             before rising
                            for air or to leave.

But how could I ever
leave you?



Who better
             knows my gravity? Who will love me knowing
the cost of love is love? Who else
loves me blackout
             drunk, out of my mind, vicious

with this rare, never want this night to end,
with this leave your life,
kind of love?

You bring me wine for my hangovers,
you call me back from
blood on the brain
            when I inhale too much water.

Time long stops the heart
This place
            is the place where you leave me.
I can’t tell what you are shouting into the water
            but the question never was what are you trying to say

it is how long will you stay
knowing all that we are promised is loss.
Promise me

when you think of me
            you will think of me

as the river of light
             you would do anything to cross.
Promise me I will see you again
             even though I will never



see you again. We will never repeat—

               not in the same way,
not exactly,
not when more
               than a swimming pool stands between us.

Each time the dream comes after

I will have less.
I will go back
              to before I saw the sky.

I will take you with me
I will take you back

into this water. I will never move from this where,
this water where
              always

I find you.

Jill Mceldowney (she/her) is the author of the full-length collections Alydar (YesYes Books, forthcoming 2026) and Otherlight (YesYes Books 2023), winner of a North American Book Award. She is found and editor of Madhouse Press. She is a recipient of a grant from the Helene Wurlitzer Foundation of New Mexico. Her previously published word can be found in publications such as The Academy of American Poets, Prairie Schooner, Tupelo Quarterly, Frontier, Muzzle, and other notable publications.

Catherine Garbinsky (she/they) is a writer living in Knoxville, Tennessee. They received their MFA in Poetry from the University of Tennessee-Knoxville, where they are now a PhD candidate. Catherine’s poems have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. She has written two chapbooks: All Spells Are Strong Here (Ghost City Press, 2018) and Even Curses End (Animal Heart Press, 2019), and her work has been featured in Yes Poetry, Coffin Bell Journal, Cream City Review, and elsewhere. 


The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Otherlight by Jill Mceldowney

This feature, chosen by Guest Editor Catherine Garbinsky, is from Otherlight by Jill Mceldowney (YesYes Books 2023).

BOUND FOR

Lightning so angry half the lights floated
blacked, flickered, came back

            and I filled my bathtub with water in case of a true outage,
an emergency-emergency. Why were you

at the bottom of those pools that—in the dark—
beware me of blood? I look to the water. I see

you clawing at your own throat,

strangers promising
                     He’s in a better place.

          What better—what life
after this—too late

for naloxone, too late for Heaven,

new earth. I sit here perpetually
              inventing lives more terrifying to live—

as if reality were not enough. I hope you never know
how far, how deep
my grief dragged me—the everydayness



of walking empty
                              grocery stores, parking lots, quiet fluorescents,
the quiet telephone.

I think that I am alive—once,

                                                    you said Lobsters,
you said something with their chromosomes,
you said the only thing time does for them is grow—

I think that I am alive now
because you are not.

If there is a world in which the dead speak, let them
tell me what it’s worth—your name
so difficult to say.  

Jill Mceldowney (she/her) is the author of the full-length collections Alydar (YesYes Books, forthcoming 2026) and Otherlight (YesYes Books 2023), winner of a North American Book Award. She is found and editor of Madhouse Press. She is a recipient of a grant from the Helene Wurlitzer Foundation of New Mexico. Her previously published word can be found in publications such as The Academy of American Poets, Prairie Schooner, Tupelo Quarterly, Frontier, Muzzle, and other notable publications.

Catherine Garbinsky (she/they) is a writer living in Knoxville, Tennessee. They received their MFA in Poetry from the University of Tennessee-Knoxville, where they are now a PhD candidate. Catherine’s poems have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. She has written two chapbooks: All Spells Are Strong Here (Ghost City Press, 2018) and Even Curses End (Animal Heart Press, 2019), and her work has been featured in Yes Poetry, Coffin Bell Journal, Cream City Review, and elsewhere.