Tag: The Wardrobe

The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: The Mid-Year Best Best Dressed

This week, Managing Editor Merrick Sloane shares a new selection from each of their 5 favorite books featured on The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed so far this year.

Merrick’s second selection for the mid-year best of 2026 is from Wolves in Shells by Kimberly Ann Priest (The University of Nebraska Press 2025).

Protections

Against the whir of my treadmill
     a shot rings out

and a wolf is gunned down—O-Six,
     they named her,

numinous alpha female
     of Yellowstone National Park

because she survived
     solo.

Even the commentator says
     this was unusual

and dangerous; yet she was beloved
     for acuity

and beauty, face like an owl mask against
     snow white.

I listen as the hunter celebrates
     his kill, the documentary

rolling. My treadmill
     rolling.

They had lifted the ban on hunting
     wolves that year—

endangered status just long enough
     for a female

to become her own pack, survive, surpass
     the males of her kind.

Kimberly Ann Priest (she/her) is a writer and visual artist whose book Wolves in Shells won the 2024 Backwaters Prize in Poetry from the University of Nebraska Press. She is the author of four full-length books of poetry and an assistant professor in the Department of Writing, Rhetoric, and Cultures at Michigan State University. Her poetry has appeared in Copper Nickel, Poetry Wales, Prairie Schooner, and Birmingham Poetry Review.

Merrick Sloane (they/them) is a neuro-Queer 90’s kid and nonbinary poet, editor, and researcher from Oklahoma. They hold an MFA in creative writing from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville and are Associate Poetry Editor of Doubleback Review. A 2026 Best of the Net and 2025 AWP Intro Journal Awards winner, Merrick’s poetry appears in citizen trans* {project}, Seattle Journal for Social Justice, Fruitslice, Puerto del Sol, and elsewhere. When they are not writing or editing, Merrick loves to serve as a pillow for their cat, Kitten, while getting lost in new worlds written by other dreamers. Merrick is deeply committed to helping create a world that liberates us all.

The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: The Mid-Year Best Best Dressed

This week, Managing Editor Merrick Sloane shares a new selection from each of their 5 favorite books featured on The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed so far this year.

Merrick’s first selection for the mid-year best of 2026 is from These Aren’t My Woods Anymore by Soon Jones (Poetose Press 2025).

You Could Be Pretty

When my breasts betrayed me the first time
             by arriving before I was ten,
my stepmother forced me to wear
             lacey bras and satin underwear,
telling me not to be a whore as she threw me
             at any boy or grown man who looked,
hoping for a shotgun marriage.

So I stopped wearing dresses outside
             of church and at weddings. I stopped
wanting to be pretty. Wore thrifted
             Timberland boots and large shirts,
carried knives.

I treated makeup like an exotic curiosity
              and yes, it makes me pretty.
Creates someone new

              and vulnerable, someone who looks
safe. Instead
              I learned to throw a punch
without breaking my wrists. Learned to throw
              grown men over my hip
like fussy children. Developed an early eye
              for tight groupings, center mass.



Learned to hold a rifle as close
               as a lover to my shoulder, and open
my bones to each bullet’s shockwave,
               to the unrelenting
hunger of the world.

Soon Jones (they/them) is a Korean-American lesbian poet and writer raised in the rural countryside of the American South. They are a Lambda Literary Fellow with an MFA from Oklahoma State University. Their work has appeared in Sinister Wisdom, Denver Quarterly, Lunch Ticket, Moon City Review, and others, and their debut collection, These Aren’t My Woods Anymore, is out now from Poetose Press. When not writing poems or working on cars, you can find Soon going on long walks through nature or stargazing.

Merrick Sloane (they/them) is a neuro-Queer 90’s kid and nonbinary poet, editor, and researcher from Oklahoma. They hold an MFA in creative writing from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville and are Associate Poetry Editor of Doubleback Review. A 2026 Best of the Net and 2025 AWP Intro Journal Awards winner, Merrick’s poetry appears in citizen trans* {project}, Seattle Journal for Social Justice, Fruitslice, Puerto del Sol, and elsewhere. When they are not writing or editing, Merrick loves to serve as a pillow for their cat, Kitten, while getting lost in new worlds written by other dreamers. Merrick is deeply committed to helping create a world that liberates us all.

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.