Tag: The Wardrobe

The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: lithopaedion by Carrie Nassif

This selection, chosen by guest editor Jillian Fantin, is from lithopaedion by Carrie Nassif, released by Finishing Line Press in 2023.

the complex

this one is the orange clattering jangle of crowds 
heard muffled from the window above 
swooping with storming clouds 

and then it is the slow sweeping stillness at the end of market 
it is the call from a real horn 
it bleats like the animal it was sawn from

with its reverberating pulse 
its wobbles of indecision this cruxing doubt
it is the humming judgment of all that we resonate of all we attune to 

this is all this noise these dopplering distances 
they span the icy the existential ruse of isolation 
no empty spaces and so many voices within

Carrie Nassif (she/her) is a queer poet, photographer, and clinical psychologist with a private practice in the rural Midwest. Her chapbook, lithopaedion was published by Finishing Line Press in 2023. Recent work can be found in The Comstock Review, Concision, The Gravity of the Thing, Pomona Valley Review, and Tupelo Quarterly; as well as anthologies such as Slow Lightning: Impractical Poetry, Waves: A Confluence of Woman’s Voices, a virtual anthology with AROHO Press, and forthcoming Written There: The Community of Writers Poetry Review.

Jillian A. Fantin is a writer with roots in the American South and north central England. They are a 2023 Sundress Publications Editorial Intern, a 2021 Martha’s Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing Poet Fellow, and a 2020 Jefferson County Memorial Project Research Fellow. With writer Joy Wilkoff, they co-founded and edit RENESME LITERARY. Jillian’s debut chapbook, A Playdough Symposium, will be released this coming summer from Ghost City Press, and more of their writing appears in American Journal of Poetry, Homology Lit, Tilted House, Spectra Poets, Barrelhouse, and poetry.onl, among others.

The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: lithopaedion by Carrie Nassif

This selection, chosen by guest editor Jillian Fantin, is from lithopaedion by Carrie Nassif, released by Finishing Line Press in 2023.

the way my face nowadays slips into my mother’s

slatted shadows wedged onto an edge-worn chair

half sunk into the murky corner of a dusky room



strands of shaggy-barked cedar branches look back

reaching for old leaf-strewn and hard-packed paths



that faded turquoise box filled to bursting with only

crumpled newspapers faded and soft with age



the jagged space between two large limbs where they join nearly kissing 

split into so deep a hollow as to nearly tear itself apart

Carrie Nassif (she/her) is a queer poet, photographer, and clinical psychologist with a private practice in the rural Midwest. Her chapbook, lithopaedion was published by Finishing Line Press in 2023. Recent work can be found in The Comstock Review, Concision, The Gravity of the Thing, Pomona Valley Review, and Tupelo Quarterly; as well as anthologies such as Slow Lightning: Impractical Poetry, Waves: A Confluence of Woman’s Voices, a virtual anthology with AROHO Press, and forthcoming Written There: The Community of Writers Poetry Review.

Jillian A. Fantin is a writer with roots in the American South and north central England. They are a 2023 Sundress Publications Editorial Intern, a 2021 Martha’s Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing Poet Fellow, and a 2020 Jefferson County Memorial Project Research Fellow. With writer Joy Wilkoff, they co-founded and edit RENESME LITERARY. Jillian’s debut chapbook, A Playdough Symposium, will be released this coming summer from Ghost City Press, and more of their writing appears in American Journal of Poetry, Homology Lit, Tilted House, Spectra Poets, Barrelhouse, and poetry.onl, among others.

The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: lithopaedion by Carrie Nassif

This selection, chosen by guest editor Jillian Fantin, is from lithopaedion by Carrie Nassif, released by Finishing Line Press in 2023.

the unmothering

finally shorn of our mahogany hair the years 	steamrolled flat 
my sister and I untag each other’s velvet ears wondering

how it must have felt for you to bleed out 
to hear your pulse slow

how your beats 
would wane 

us small enough to rest in your blonde arms
your   feather breath on ours

seeing you stitch your own lashes back to their raw lids
undoing your old scars    each new welt we wore

how the strong white tendons of your bare hands 
first pulled us from your living body

then twisted rubber bands so tight around 
we fell away 		unnoticed

Carrie Nassif (she/her) is a queer poet, photographer, and clinical psychologist with a private practice in the rural Midwest. Her chapbook, lithopaedion was published by Finishing Line Press in 2023. Recent work can be found in The Comstock Review, Concision, The Gravity of the Thing, Pomona Valley Review, and Tupelo Quarterly; as well as anthologies such as Slow Lightning: Impractical Poetry, Waves: A Confluence of Woman’s Voices, a virtual anthology with AROHO Press, and forthcoming Written There: The Community of Writers Poetry Review.

Jillian A. Fantin is a writer with roots in the American South and north central England. They are a 2023 Sundress Publications Editorial Intern, a 2021 Martha’s Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing Poet Fellow, and a 2020 Jefferson County Memorial Project Research Fellow. With writer Joy Wilkoff, they co-founded and edit RENESME LITERARY. Jillian’s debut chapbook, A Playdough Symposium, will be released this coming summer from Ghost City Press, and more of their writing appears in American Journal of Poetry, Homology Lit, Tilted House, Spectra Poets, Barrelhouse, and poetry.onl, among others.

The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: lithopaedion by Carrie Nassif

This selection, chosen by guest editor Jillian Fantin, is from lithopaedion by Carrie Nassif, released by Finishing Line Press in 2023.

lithopaedion

borne of stone mothers
cased within 

their abdomens   we 
ancient daughters    

coil into our own 
calcified spleens    this 

is how we are safe 
from each other

too deep for a blackened needle
to pry ourselves out like a sliver

no glory in becoming such lustrous      such impervious pearls

nor incubating these 
milkglass prophecies

of how we might willfully unravel
reduce our selves to gravel to be expelled

like gallstones unmoored from frigid walls
adrift

a diasporum

as if we could make an Eden
from whatever place we claw

to be glacial stone colonists 
seeding pieces of us for the others to thaw

Carrie Nassif (she/her) is a queer poet, photographer, and clinical psychologist with a private practice in the rural Midwest. Her chapbook, lithopaedion was published by Finishing Line Press in 2023. Recent work can be found in The Comstock Review, Concision, The Gravity of the Thing, Pomona Valley Review, and Tupelo Quarterly; as well as anthologies such as Slow Lightning: Impractical Poetry, Waves: A Confluence of Woman’s Voices, a virtual anthology with AROHO Press, and forthcoming Written There: The Community of Writers Poetry Review.

Jillian A. Fantin is a writer with roots in the American South and north central England. They are a 2023 Sundress Publications Editorial Intern, a 2021 Martha’s Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing Poet Fellow, and a 2020 Jefferson County Memorial Project Research Fellow. With writer Joy Wilkoff, they co-founded and edit RENESME LITERARY. Jillian’s debut chapbook, A Playdough Symposium, will be released this coming summer from Ghost City Press, and more of their writing appears in American Journal of Poetry, Homology Lit, Tilted House, Spectra Poets, Barrelhouse, and poetry.onl, among others.

The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Another Way to Split Water by Alycia Pirmohamed

This selection, chosen by guest editor Alyse Bensel, is from Another Way to Split Water by Alycia Pirmohamed, released by YesYes Books in 2022.

Another Way to Split Water

once, in childhood, a girl walked into her house of prayer and became fog. the stories the great-greats pass down are always about transformation: seed to pulp, saltwater to pearl. somewhere, the deer are bounding into the snow, unaware of each firing neuron, unaware of the river basin’s rich soil. what was the threshold of her muscle? how many fires were lit before she leveed into ghost? in early january, they cross the grove in groups of three, wet and for a moment, gliding. when the deer land, something about the earth has changed. she crossed like any other animal would. perhaps, too, licked at the frozen river, kissed her reflection. it is unknown where she landed. once, in childhood, her mother crossed water and split into so many particles that at last, she became a discord of countless things: part mule deer, part alluvial, part clear knowledge in the frozen wild.

Alycia Pirmohamed is a Canadian-born poet based in Scotland. Her debut collection Another Way to Split Water was released internationally in 2022 by YesYes Books in the United States and Polygon Books in the UK. She is also the author of the pamphlets Hinge and Faces that Fled the Wind and the collaborative essay Second Memory, which was co-authored with Pratyusha. She is the co-founder of the Scottish BPOC Writers Network, a co-organiser of the Ledbury Poetry Critics Program, and she currently teaches on the MSt. Creative Writing at the University of Cambridge. She is the recipient of several awards, including the 2019 CBC Poetry Prize, the 92Y Discovery Prize, the Ploughshares Emerging Writer’s Award, and the 2020 Edwin Morgan Poetry Award.

Alyse Bensel is the author of Rare Wondrous Things: A Poetic Biography of Maria Sibylla Merian (Green Writers Press, 2020) and three chapbooks. Her poems and essays have appeared or are forthcoming in Alaska Quarterly Review, Cream City Review, South Dakota Review, and West Branch. She serves as Poetry Editor for Cherry Tree and teaches at Brevard College, where she directs the Looking Glass Rock Writers’ Conference. 

The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Another Way to Split Water by Alycia Pirmohamed

This selection, chosen by guest editor Alyse Bensel, is from Another Way to Split Water by Alycia Pirmohamed, released by YesYes Books in 2022.

Elsewhere

She did not know the shape of
this country—		wide 		darkjagged 

bend in the river, rock elm withering,
everything withering 

into unfamiliar, needled forest.
She was searching for the water and the water

was a heartache tongued by wild deer.

In northern Alberta, she was a line of crow
edging into the unknown,

a woman caught between fennels of a dream
and long mouths of birch.

Even the key of her body— 
		jaggedlong 		gentledark— 

could not unlock this landscape. 

Sometimes there is a fog thick enough
to hide the trees

and she imagines this country unwithers,
becomes a different land,

where her body is shaped like the river
and the river 

				is shaped like belonging.

Alycia Pirmohamed is a Canadian-born poet based in Scotland. Her debut collection Another Way to Split Water was released internationally in 2022 by YesYes Books in the United States and Polygon Books in the UK. She is also the author of the pamphlets Hinge and Faces that Fled the Wind and the collaborative essay Second Memory, which was co-authored with Pratyusha. She is the co-founder of the Scottish BPOC Writers Network, a co-organiser of the Ledbury Poetry Critics Program, and she currently teaches on the MSt. Creative Writing at the University of Cambridge. She is the recipient of several awards, including the 2019 CBC Poetry Prize, the 92Y Discovery Prize, the Ploughshares Emerging Writer’s Award, and the 2020 Edwin Morgan Poetry Award.

Alyse Bensel is the author of Rare Wondrous Things: A Poetic Biography of Maria Sibylla Merian (Green Writers Press, 2020) and three chapbooks. Her poems and essays have appeared or are forthcoming in Alaska Quarterly Review, Cream City Review, South Dakota Review, and West Branch. She serves as Poetry Editor for Cherry Tree and teaches at Brevard College, where she directs the Looking Glass Rock Writers’ Conference. 

The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Another Way to Split Water by Alycia Pirmohamed

This selection, chosen by guest editor Alyse Bensel, is from Another Way to Split Water by Alycia Pirmohamed, released by YesYes Books in 2022.

Midnight Vessel Across the Great Sea

                              What kind of river, then, has no middle?
                              —Édouard Glissant

Another bloom after the first bloom      inheritance is a form
of second      sight in the past someone with my birthmarks
predicted the next moon      the upheaval      my own ebb.
My body is the echo of her iambs      a tradition that sieves
right through      my ancestor’s thread.      I am slick with
rosewater and cat’s eye      —I can’t choose between
survival or pleasure.      In the past      someone who looked
like me fell      into the valley of roses      five times a day.
This echo is      another velvet petal      submerged in the drool
of my mouth      I am submerged      in the drool of her mouth.
My second sight is an heirloom      a volume of sonnets
passed down      a line of flight      as if she is more image
than intent      more midnight than syllable      the eye before
the eye      the root beneath my poem.      I am a remembrance
and she is my volta—      an echo blooms      this echo is her hair
parting into my hair      she is the fine dark strand      across
my memory      she glides like a reed      a silhouette of green
across the great sea      her poetry strikes through      my window
like a stone      breaking the skin      memory of water.

Alycia Pirmohamed is a Canadian-born poet based in Scotland. Her debut collection Another Way to Split Water was released internationally in 2022 by YesYes Books in the United States and Polygon Books in the UK. She is also the author of the pamphlets Hinge and Faces that Fled the Wind and the collaborative essay Second Memory, which was co-authored with Pratyusha. She is the co-founder of the Scottish BPOC Writers Network, a co-organiser of the Ledbury Poetry Critics Program, and she currently teaches on the MSt. Creative Writing at the University of Cambridge. She is the recipient of several awards, including the 2019 CBC Poetry Prize, the 92Y Discovery Prize, the Ploughshares Emerging Writer’s Award, and the 2020 Edwin Morgan Poetry Award.

Alyse Bensel is the author of Rare Wondrous Things: A Poetic Biography of Maria Sibylla Merian (Green Writers Press, 2020) and three chapbooks. Her poems and essays have appeared or are forthcoming in Alaska Quarterly Review, Cream City Review, South Dakota Review, and West Branch. She serves as Poetry Editor for Cherry Tree and teaches at Brevard College, where she directs the Looking Glass Rock Writers’ Conference. 

The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Another Way to Split Water by Alycia Pirmohamed

This selection, chosen by guest editor Alyse Bensel, is from Another Way to Split Water by Alycia Pirmohamed, released by YesYes Books in 2022.

Hinge

Tonight I am all joint and animal dark. My heel blots out the moon, 
	vanishes the small nod of light. And yes,
I prayed today, verging into my bismillah before settling 
		on the broken.

I stoop into my longings, plot a seed in every corner. Last week 
	I titled another page with my body 
		and surrendered every bending, splitting line of myself
to the making.

When we refer to plants, we call this positive phototropism, 
		a body rivering toward the light.
I want to river toward the light. I want to lean my neck toward 
	a thing until I, too, become ism,

scientific and named into truth. 
	Today, I walked through a dream that wasn’t mine, and I 
		thought of you waiting at the end of it,
as if to gather me

and maybe that’s just the kind of woman I am—no matter 
	how many times I halve the moon or find myself in a room
without a window, I know Allah 
		sees everything, every hand planting something new,
every metaphor for the tree it becomes. And yes, 
	I prayed today, but planting my palms together has never 
		felt like blossoming up the side of a mountain.
The only time these hands have ever flowered,

have ever been used for something good, 
		was that spring at Yamnuska, where we found a clear
blue door of glacial water, and I walked right through 
	your reflection.

Alycia Pirmohamed is a Canadian-born poet based in Scotland. Her debut collection Another Way to Split Water was released internationally in 2022 by YesYes Books in the United States and Polygon Books in the UK. She is also the author of the pamphlets Hinge and Faces that Fled the Wind and the collaborative essay Second Memory, which was co-authored with Pratyusha. She is the co-founder of the Scottish BPOC Writers Network, a co-organiser of the Ledbury Poetry Critics Program, and she currently teaches on the MSt. Creative Writing at the University of Cambridge. She is the recipient of several awards, including the 2019 CBC Poetry Prize, the 92Y Discovery Prize, the Ploughshares Emerging Writer’s Award, and the 2020 Edwin Morgan Poetry Award.

Alyse Bensel is the author of Rare Wondrous Things: A Poetic Biography of Maria Sibylla Merian (Green Writers Press, 2020) and three chapbooks. Her poems and essays have appeared or are forthcoming in Alaska Quarterly Review, Cream City Review, South Dakota Review, and West Branch. She serves as Poetry Editor for Cherry Tree and teaches at Brevard College, where she directs the Looking Glass Rock Writers’ Conference. 

The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Another Way to Split Water by Alycia Pirmohamed

This selection, chosen by guest editor Alyse Bensel, is from Another Way to Split Water by Alycia Pirmohamed, released by YesYes Books in 2022.

Meditation while Plaiting my Hair

I part my hair straight down the middle,
a river on either side—
in the past, someone shaped like me
poured water from a metal carafe
straight into my mouth,
the echo of my river submerged in your river—
lately, I read about storms all night
because there is no lightning here; instead
I see the wind pull down the tautness
of trees and the swans at the lagoon part
through the wreckage.
Each one is another translation for love
if love was more vessel than loose thread.

		Once, we sat poolside outdoors in Dar es Salaam
		and I chose survival over your body.
		Why is it I only ever see the night heron alone?
		I braid neatly together my hair, soaked by salt
		and the moss of a body I do not touch,
		the spine of a book left open on the page
		I forgot to bookmark,
		the spine of a book I left out in a storm,
		each of its rooms sliding into our margins,
		into all these tendrils of blank space—tell me, when did I let us splinter?

Alycia Pirmohamed is a Canadian-born poet based in Scotland. Her debut collection Another Way to Split Water was released internationally in 2022 by YesYes Books in the United States and Polygon Books in the UK. She is also the author of the pamphlets Hinge and Faces that Fled the Wind and the collaborative essay Second Memory, which was co-authored with Pratyusha. She is the co-founder of the Scottish BPOC Writers Network, a co-organiser of the Ledbury Poetry Critics Program, and she currently teaches on the MSt. Creative Writing at the University of Cambridge. She is the recipient of several awards, including the 2019 CBC Poetry Prize, the 92Y Discovery Prize, the Ploughshares Emerging Writer’s Award, and the 2020 Edwin Morgan Poetry Award.

Alyse Bensel is the author of Rare Wondrous Things: A Poetic Biography of Maria Sibylla Merian (Green Writers Press, 2020) and three chapbooks. Her poems and essays have appeared or are forthcoming in Alaska Quarterly Review, Cream City Review, South Dakota Review, and West Branch. She serves as Poetry Editor for Cherry Tree and teaches at Brevard College, where she directs the Looking Glass Rock Writers’ Conference. 

The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Gold Hill Family Audio by Corrie Lynn White

This selection, chosen by guest editor Alyse Bensel, is from Gold Hill Family Audio by Corrie Lynn White, released by Southeast Missouri State University Press in 2022.

Suck Creek Scramble

He ties a rope
		around my waist
so I can step
				into a waterfall.
		Ferns, redbuds,
						and cuckoos
weave us in.
		I delete Tinder.
At Christmas,
				we drag boxes
		of golden glass balls
						from the closet.
I sleep next to him
		like a hog
when it finds
				cold mud,
		like I’m on a boat
						taking me slow
and straight
		to death,
like an anchor chain
				when it hits
		the bottom of
						the ocean floor.

Corrie Lynn White is the author of Gold Hill Family Audio (Southeast Missouri State University Press, 2022). A 2021 Tennessee Arts Commission Fellow in Poetry, she is the recipient of the 2013 Amon Liner Poetry Award from the Greensboro Review. Originally from Gold Hill, North Carolina, White currently lives in Chattanooga.

Alyse Bensel is the author of Rare Wondrous Things: A Poetic Biography of Maria Sibylla Merian (Green Writers Press, 2020) and three chapbooks. Her poems and essays have appeared or are forthcoming in Alaska Quarterly Review, Cream City Review, South Dakota Review, and West Branch. She serves as Poetry Editor for Cherry Tree and teaches at Brevard College, where she directs the Looking Glass Rock Writers’ Conference.