Tag: The Wardrobe

The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Erasures of My Coming Out (Letter) by Mary Warren Foulk

This selection, chosen by guest editor JJ Rowan, is from Erasures of My Coming Out (Letter) by Mary Warren Foulk, released by The Poetry Box in 2022.

THE LETTER

November 2002

Dear Mom,

There’s something I need to share with you, that I’ve been keeping from you. I can’t keep it in anymore. I am burdened by secrecy and the stress is weighing on me. I am sorry to be doing this by mail. For me, a letter is the most effective, the easiest and perhaps most considerate way to convey what I am thinking and feeling. I want you to know that I am with Alyson. She is not just my roommate, but also my partner and we have a wonderful, beautiful relationship and life together in New York. I’ve waited until now to tell you for a number of reasons—please trust and try to understand them.

I needed the time and space for my sake, to feel comfortable with and committed to me, my identity, my choices and needs, to feel comfortable with and committed to my relationship with Alyson. I know this is hard, it’s not the “norm,” especially for our family and family expectations. We’re not the most liberal of families. And it’s weird for me. It’s difficult to be gay—society makes it so. I don’t even necessarily identify as such. I feel as if I met this great person and I want to be with this great person. I know this will take some time to adjust to, to accept, for all involved.

I was scared, scared of rejection, of more loss, disappointment, judgment. I know this is not what you would necessarily want or hope for me. I love and adore Alyson, she is phenomenal, incredibly special, and vital to me. I am not validating or respecting her or me, our choices, by being silent, hidden. I can’t and don’t want to deny us anymore. I want you to know me, fully. I don’t want you to find out through some other means or after the fact.

Please don’t respond right away. Take some time to read and re-read this, to think about your response, your feelings. I’m sorry it has taken me this long to tell you. It is my hope that we talk about this and over time, that you ask questions and tell me what you need. It is also my hope that you will get to know Alyson and that you will have the chance to see what I see.

Please always know that I love you.
Mary

ERASURE

Text of Image

DATE

Dear [             ],


                             a letter

                                                    to tell you




about                  me




[             ]

Mary Warren Foulk has been published in Fjords Review, The Hollins Critic, Pine Hills Review, Palette Poetry, Silkworm, and Steam Ticket, among other publications. Her work also has appeared in (M)othering Anthology (Inanna Publications), and My Loves: A Digital Anthology of Queer Love Poems (Ghost City Press). Her chapbook, If I Could Write You a Happier Ending, was selected by dancing girl press (2021) for their annual series featuring women poets. Her manuscript Self-Portrait with Erosion was a finalist for the 2021 Gival Press Poetry Award.

JJ Rowan (they/them) is a queer nonbinary writer and dancer. Their poems, not-poems, and interactive performances have appeared in the tiny, Dream Pop Journal, 45th Parallel, and at the SMOL Fair and the Splinter Collective’s Interrupted by Trains, among others. Their most recent chapbook is a simple verb (Bloof Books). They are on the editorial team at just femme & dandy. You can sign up for their newsletter, actual motion, at their website.

The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Erasures of My Coming Out (Letter) by Mary Warren Foulk

This selection, chosen by guest editor JJ Rowan, is from Erasures of My Coming Out (Letter) by Mary Warren Foulk, released by The Poetry Box in 2022.

THE LETTER

November 2002

Dear Mom,

There’s something I need to share with you, that I’ve been keeping from you. I can’t keep it in anymore. I am burdened by secrecy and the stress is weighing on me. I am sorry to be doing this by mail. For me, a letter is the most effective, the easiest and perhaps most considerate way to convey what I am thinking and feeling. I want you to know that I am with Alyson. She is not just my roommate, but also my partner and we have a wonderful, beautiful relationship and life together in New York. I’ve waited until now to tell you for a number of reasons—please trust and try to understand them.

I needed the time and space for my sake, to feel comfortable with and committed to me, my identity, my choices and needs, to feel comfortable with and committed to my relationship with Alyson. I know this is hard, it’s not the “norm,” especially for our family and family expectations. We’re not the most liberal of families. And it’s weird for me. It’s difficult to be gay—society makes it so. I don’t even necessarily identify as such. I feel as if I met this great person and I want to be with this great person. I know this will take some time to adjust to, to accept, for all involved.

I was scared, scared of rejection, of more loss, disappointment, judgment. I know this is not what you would necessarily want or hope for me. I love and adore Alyson, she is phenomenal, incredibly special, and vital to me. I am not validating or respecting her or me, our choices, by being silent, hidden. I can’t and don’t want to deny us anymore. I want you to know me, fully. I don’t want you to find out through some other means or after the fact.

Please don’t respond right away. Take some time to read and re-read this, to think about your response, your feelings. I’m sorry it has taken me this long to tell you. It is my hope that we talk about this and over time, that you ask questions and tell me what you need. It is also my hope that you will get to know Alyson and that you will have the chance to see what I see.

Please always know that I love you.
Mary

ERASURE

Text of Image

DATE

Dear [             ],

There's something                        I've been keeping                I can't




          I can't




[             ]

Mary Warren Foulk has been published in Fjords Review, The Hollins Critic, Pine Hills Review, Palette Poetry, Silkworm, and Steam Ticket, among other publications. Her work also has appeared in (M)othering Anthology (Inanna Publications), and My Loves: A Digital Anthology of Queer Love Poems (Ghost City Press). Her chapbook, If I Could Write You a Happier Ending, was selected by dancing girl press (2021) for their annual series featuring women poets. Her manuscript Self-Portrait with Erosion was a finalist for the 2021 Gival Press Poetry Award.

JJ Rowan (they/them) is a queer nonbinary writer and dancer. Their poems, not-poems, and interactive performances have appeared in the tiny, Dream Pop Journal, 45th Parallel, and at the SMOL Fair and the Splinter Collective’s Interrupted by Trains, among others. Their most recent chapbook is a simple verb (Bloof Books). They are on the editorial team at just femme & dandy. You can sign up for their newsletter, actual motion, at their website.

The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Breakpoint by Betsy Aoki

This selection, chosen by guest editor JJ Rowan, is from Breakpoint by Betsy Aoki, released by Tebot Bach in 2022.

#Function of the self

def update(self):
	# update angle
	self.angle += self.angle_vel

	# update position
	self.pos[0] = (self.pos[0] + self.vel[0]) % WIDTH
	self.pos[1] = (self.pos[1] + self.vel[1]) % HEIGHT

	#update age
	self.age = self.age+1
	if self.age < self.lifespan:
		return False
	else:
			return True

Elizabeth (Betsy) Aoki is a poet, fiction writer and game producer. Her first poetry collection, Breakpoint was a2019 National Poetry Series Finalist and published as the winner of the Patricia Bibby First Book Award. Her poem “Slouching like a velvet rope” won the 2021 Auburn Witness Poetry Prize, selected by Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Jericho Brown. Most recently her work is featured in Cascadia Field Guide, a Pacific Northwest nature anthology matching poets with visual artists. Her prior publications include The Margins (Asian American Writers’ Workshop), Uncanny Magazine’s 50th issue, Calyx, and Hunger Mountain.

JJ Rowan (they/them) is a queer nonbinary writer and dancer. Their poems, not-poems, and interactive performances have appeared in the tiny, Dream Pop Journal, 45th Parallel, and at the SMOL Fair and the Splinter Collective’s Interrupted by Trains, among others. Their most recent chapbook is a simple verb (Bloof Books). They are on the editorial team at just femme & dandy. You can sign up for their newsletter, actual motion, at their website.

The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Breakpoint by Betsy Aoki

This selection, chosen by guest editor JJ Rowan, is from Breakpoint by Betsy Aoki, released by Tebot Bach in 2022.

[ X_] plays Planescape Torment

I am not a girl.
I am always waking up somewhere
completely gross. In this case an undead
factory complete with me, product #257
(or whatever the tag said, I lost it). The smell
of the talking skull isn’t so bad, just the rest
of me feels rubbery and old.
When they say the tang of copper blood
they mean this place, which is a mine of pain,
a staircase of creaking bones, an ever-present
stone furnace that could end my misery presumably.
But it just doesn’t get that easy.

The hero eternal has a bad haircut.
The hero eternal is sort of a lunkhead, but
he’s me, and I try to play him faithful to the part
complete with reading all my former skins
stretched like drumheads on the wall.
Or maybe I’m just the eternal bro
doomed to wander the world looking
for high fives and bandages, a new girlfriend
and more bandages and unable to defeat myself
properly, or look myself in the eye.

Elizabeth (Betsy) Aoki is a poet, fiction writer and game producer. Her first poetry collection, Breakpoint was a2019 National Poetry Series Finalist and published as the winner of the Patricia Bibby First Book Award. Her poem “Slouching like a velvet rope” won the 2021 Auburn Witness Poetry Prize, selected by Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Jericho Brown. Most recently her work is featured in Cascadia Field Guide, a Pacific Northwest nature anthology matching poets with visual artists. Her prior publications include The Margins (Asian American Writers’ Workshop), Uncanny Magazine’s 50th issue, Calyx, and Hunger Mountain.

JJ Rowan (they/them) is a queer nonbinary writer and dancer. Their poems, not-poems, and interactive performances have appeared in the tiny, Dream Pop Journal, 45th Parallel, and at the SMOL Fair and the Splinter Collective’s Interrupted by Trains, among others. Their most recent chapbook is a simple verb (Bloof Books). They are on the editorial team at just femme & dandy. You can sign up for their newsletter, actual motion, at their website.

The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Breakpoint by Betsy Aoki

This selection, chosen by guest editor JJ Rowan, is from Breakpoint by Betsy Aoki, released by Tebot Bach in 2022.

Messaging the dead

I watch as the cursor glides across the screen
captured in a chat box, hesitating as in life,
or maybe it’s just harder to get the Internet
where the dead are. They take turns typing
cryptic messages asking where I am, what
am I wearing, why did I talk more to her
instead of him. They use acronyms of texting
because each letter travels so far from
echoing minds to my nervous eyeballs.
They always pass the Turing test in triplicate.
When I ask how it is over there they evade
comparison: “unspeakable” “indescribable”
“neither hot nor cold, really.” The dead
always miss me, but I am just another cursor
in the end, I could be anyone over here,
alive and well, trying to capture their footprints
as they try to capture mine. We cannot touch.
We think we understand. We type and type
worried to find that each has been talking
like the skim of a Ouija board’s glide
only to our own twitches and fears
all this time.

Elizabeth (Betsy) Aoki is a poet, fiction writer and game producer. Her first poetry collection, Breakpoint was a2019 National Poetry Series Finalist and published as the winner of the Patricia Bibby First Book Award. Her poem “Slouching like a velvet rope” won the 2021 Auburn Witness Poetry Prize, selected by Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Jericho Brown. Most recently her work is featured in Cascadia Field Guide, a Pacific Northwest nature anthology matching poets with visual artists. Her prior publications include The Margins (Asian American Writers’ Workshop), Uncanny Magazine’s 50th issue, Calyx, and Hunger Mountain.

JJ Rowan (they/them) is a queer nonbinary writer and dancer. Their poems, not-poems, and interactive performances have appeared in the tiny, Dream Pop Journal, 45th Parallel, and at the SMOL Fair and the Splinter Collective’s Interrupted by Trains, among others. Their most recent chapbook is a simple verb (Bloof Books). They are on the editorial team at just femme & dandy. You can sign up for their newsletter, actual motion, at their website.

The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Breakpoint by Betsy Aoki

This selection, chosen by guest editor JJ Rowan, is from Breakpoint by Betsy Aoki, released by Tebot Bach in 2022.

Do I look like I code?

This is what [X_]’s code looks like:
a teletype explodes after eating a dictionary.

This is what coding looks like from behind:
knob over knob of spine hunched over

tympani beat, flat Chiclet clicks,
uneasy buttocks shifting on a hard seat.

This is what [X_] coding looks like:
a shiny silver glow, a dull matte black square,

knob over knob hunched over tufts of hair,
fingers of light across a naked throat.

This is what happens when you code for [X_]:

<                                                >
Whatever you held in that space I erase.

Elizabeth (Betsy) Aoki is a poet, fiction writer and game producer. Her first poetry collection, Breakpoint was a2019 National Poetry Series Finalist and published as the winner of the Patricia Bibby First Book Award. Her poem “Slouching like a velvet rope” won the 2021 Auburn Witness Poetry Prize, selected by Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Jericho Brown. Most recently her work is featured in Cascadia Field Guide, a Pacific Northwest nature anthology matching poets with visual artists. Her prior publications include The Margins (Asian American Writers’ Workshop), Uncanny Magazine’s 50th issue, Calyx, and Hunger Mountain.

JJ Rowan (they/them) is a queer nonbinary writer and dancer. Their poems, not-poems, and interactive performances have appeared in the tiny, Dream Pop Journal, 45th Parallel, and at the SMOL Fair and the Splinter Collective’s Interrupted by Trains, among others. Their most recent chapbook is a simple verb (Bloof Books). They are on the editorial team at just femme & dandy. You can sign up for their newsletter, actual motion, at their website.

The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Breakpoint by Betsy Aoki

This selection, chosen by guest editor JJ Rowan, is from Breakpoint by Betsy Aoki, released by Tebot Bach in 2022.

228 #This collision, defined

229     def collide (self,other_object):
230
231     x = self.get_radius ( )
232     y = other_object.get_radius ( )
233     raddistance = x + y
234
235     if dist (self.pos,other_object.pos) < raddistance:
236          return True
237     else:
238          return False

Elizabeth (Betsy) Aoki is a poet, fiction writer and game producer. Her first poetry collection, Breakpoint was a2019 National Poetry Series Finalist and published as the winner of the Patricia Bibby First Book Award. Her poem “Slouching like a velvet rope” won the 2021 Auburn Witness Poetry Prize, selected by Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Jericho Brown. Most recently her work is featured in Cascadia Field Guide, a Pacific Northwest nature anthology matching poets with visual artists. Her prior publications include The Margins (Asian American Writers’ Workshop), Uncanny Magazine’s 50th issue, Calyx, and Hunger Mountain.

JJ Rowan (they/them) is a queer nonbinary writer and dancer. Their poems, not-poems, and interactive performances have appeared in the tiny, Dream Pop Journal, 45th Parallel, and at the SMOL Fair and the Splinter Collective’s Interrupted by Trains, among others. Their most recent chapbook is a simple verb (Bloof Books). They are on the editorial team at just femme & dandy. You can sign up for their newsletter, actual motion, at their website.

The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Being Many Seeds by Marilyn McCabe

This selection, chosen by Managing Editor Krista Cox, is from Being Many Seeds by Marilyn McCabe, released by Grayson Books in 2020.
While the day is its own 
autocracy, I am a citizen
staring out at the world,
touch the cool glass of rain's
mirror. Color deepens
then fades, a slow flicker
as if I am blinking,
as if I must open the eyes
inside myself to keep
democracy alive.

::

            the day is 

                                world
             the cool glass of 
               Color
                       a            flicker
                     blinking
                                the eyes
                           to keep
                      alive

::

            the 

                                world
             
               
                      
                     
                                the eyes
                                  keep
                      alive

He got the science wrong, according to the scientists, but it seemed Teilhard was on to something with regard to the evolution of culture and social structure. Evolution seems to favor the cooperative group. Certainly ants have taken over my backyard.

Marilyn McCabe‘s poetry has won awards and contests through A Room of Her Own Foundation, The Word Works, Grayson Books, the New York State Council on the Arts, and the Adirondack Center for Writing. Her books of poems include Perpetual Motion and Glass Factory, and chapbooks Rugged Means of Grace and, most recently, Being Many Seeds. Poems and videopoetry have been published in print and online, and videopoems have appeared in festivals and galleries.

The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Being Many Seeds by Marilyn McCabe

This selection, chosen by Managing Editor Krista Cox, is from Being Many Seeds by Marilyn McCabe, released by Grayson Books in 2020.
You are moving toward faster things
as evening blows papers around your step,
the hum of sidewalks pale and pocked;
you remove your hat with flourish at the red light.
You have told your stories,
striding corridors of skyscrapers, which reach
farther from you and you walk faster
following the breeze. Horns blow, echo
clank of subway cover over
and over. You are turning, step assured, kicking
aside the breeze. Ah, you are
finished business, in no need of direction,
but still not
faster than the night.

::

     evening blows 

                   your hat with 
                                   stories

                                                        which
                                                              echo
                                             over
and over
                                      you are
                                   in      need of 

                      the night

::

 
                                             

                                      you are
                                   

                      the night

Teilhard was born in the Auvergne, a sparsely populated area of ancient volcanoes, wild valleys, werewolf tales, and old languages. One could believe almost anything there.

Marilyn McCabe‘s poetry has won awards and contests through A Room of Her Own Foundation, The Word Works, Grayson Books, the New York State Council on the Arts, and the Adirondack Center for Writing. Her books of poems include Perpetual Motion and Glass Factory, and chapbooks Rugged Means of Grace and, most recently, Being Many Seeds. Poems and videopoetry have been published in print and online, and videopoems have appeared in festivals and galleries.

The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Being Many Seeds by Marilyn McCabe

This selection, chosen by Managing Editor Krista Cox, is from Being Many Seeds by Marilyn McCabe, released by Grayson Books in 2020.
As stars are not
the mystic harbor of my wishes
nor mass but space and burning,
so are my questions.

I come to every strange city
as a refugee coming home,
the old streets as if new,
a familiar portico, flourished pedestal,

view from this dusty window.
I am this name unasked.

::

      stars are

                                              burning
                    questions

I come to every                city

                            as if 
a 

                         dusty window

::

      stars are

                                              burning
                    

                    every                city

Teilhard de Chardin wandered into the realm of physics, considered the molecule’s ascension toward the cell, the cell’s journey toward the creation of conscious beings, and he compared the evolutionary trip of the physical and that of the spirit.

Marilyn McCabe‘s poetry has won awards and contests through A Room of Her Own Foundation, The Word Works, Grayson Books, the New York State Council on the Arts, and the Adirondack Center for Writing. Her books of poems include Perpetual Motion and Glass Factory, and chapbooks Rugged Means of Grace and, most recently, Being Many Seeds. Poems and videopoetry have been published in print and online, and videopoems have appeared in festivals and galleries.