Tag: The Wardrobe

The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Self-Talk by Esinam Bediako

This selection, chosen by Guest Editor Romy Ewing, is from Self-Talk by Esinam Bediako (Porkbelly Press 2025).

Content Warning: racism or racialized violence

Black Hard Palate

Once upon a time, you had so much pigment in your skin,
darkness pooling in your elbows, your knuckles, and especially
your knees. You looked, some kid quipped, like you’d fallen on
your knees in the blackest dirt on the rainiest day. Chocolate
knees. Shit knees. These kids were black, like you, but they
were the right kind, and you, wrong. They’re just kids being
kids, your teacher said, like you weren’t a kid, too, like you
should shoulder their cruelty, like you had to wait for them to
grow out of it.


Later, when you were older but still young, you yawned too
wide in science, and your lab partner gasped. Eww, he said,
what is that? It looks like those pictures of skin cancer from
our textbook. At home, in the mirror, you spotted a splotch on
the roof of your mouth, like a prune had flattened itself against
your hard palate. Your mother, a nurse who has seen
everything, had never seen this. Your doctor called it
hyperpigmentation, excess pigment that would likely fade
along with the darkness on the skin of your joints. Not fade,
really. Spread. You’d grow more skin, and the blackness would
have someplace to go. How long, you asked, how soon, but all
the doctor said was that you would grow out of it.

Esinam Bediako (she/her) is a Ghanaian American writer from Detroit. She is the author of the Ann Petry Award-winning novel, Blood on the Brain (Red Hen Press, 2024), as well as the essay/poetry chapbook, Self-Talk (Porkbelly Press, 2025). You can find some of her recent work in Porter House Review, Cathexis Northwest Press, Great River Review, North American Review, and Southern Humanities Review. Esi lives in Claremont, CA with her family.

Romy Rhoads Ewing (she/her) writes from Sacramento, CA, where she was born and raised.  Her work has appeared in HAD, Oyez Review, Rejection Letters, Bullshit Lit, Major 7th Magazine, and more. Her poetry chapbook please stay was published in 2024 by Bottlecap Press. Her hybrid zine, someday [everybody but] us will laugh about all of this, was briefly physically distributed at the 3rd Annual Hallow-Zine Fest and is available digitally. She also edits poetry and nonfiction for JAKE and runs the archival site SACRAMENTO DIRTBAG ARCHIVES. She can be found at romyrhoadsewing.xyz


The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: FLOWN by B. Fulton Jennes

This selection, chosen by Guest Editor Romy Ewing, is from FLOWN by B. Fulton Jennes (Porkbelly Press 2024).

My Dead Sister Speaks to Me Through Wordle

When GRAVE follows DEATH
within a few games,
I decide it’s her.

Is that you? I ask.
FALSE the day’s word.
A day later: MAYBE.

Where are you?
APART she answers.
A week later: ALONE.

How is it where you are?
For days, she’s silent.
The game is just a game.

This morning:
FLOWN.

The poems of B. Fulton Jennes have appeared widely in literary journals and anthologies, including Comstock Review, MER, Rust and Moth, SWWIM, and Tupelo Quarterly. She is the winner of the 2025 Subnivean Award, the 2023 Millennium Award, the 2022 Lascaux Prize, as well as many other poetry competitions. Her collection Blinded Birds received the 2022 International Book Award for a poetry chapbook. FLOWN—an elegy-in-verse to her late sister—was published by Porkbelly Press in 2024. A third chapbook, Dirty Bird & Myrt, will be published by Dancing Girl Press in 2026. Jennes is poet laureate emerita of Ridgefield, CT, where she directs the Poetry in the Garden festival each summer and hosts “Poems from Connecticut’s Four Corners,” a monthly online reading series.

Romy Rhoads Ewing (she/her) writes from Sacramento, CA, where she was born and raised.  Her work has appeared in HAD, Oyez Review, Rejection Letters, Bullshit Lit, Major 7th Magazine, and more. Her poetry chapbook please stay was published in 2024 by Bottlecap Press. Her hybrid zine, someday [everybody but] us will laugh about all of this, was briefly physically distributed at the 3rd Annual Hallow-Zine Fest and is available digitally. She also edits poetry and nonfiction for JAKE and runs the archival site SACRAMENTO DIRTBAG ARCHIVES. She can be found at romyrhoadsewing.xyz


The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: FLOWN by B. Fulton Jennes

This selection, chosen by Guest Editor Romy Ewing, is from FLOWN by B. Fulton Jennes (Porkbelly Press 2024).

While Picking Flowers for My Dead Sister

a sudden rain
fuses my clothing to me—

an unbearable reminder
of flesh.

The poems of B. Fulton Jennes have appeared widely in literary journals and anthologies, including Comstock Review, MER, Rust and Moth, SWWIM, and Tupelo Quarterly. She is the winner of the 2025 Subnivean Award, the 2023 Millennium Award, the 2022 Lascaux Prize, as well as many other poetry competitions. Her collection Blinded Birds received the 2022 International Book Award for a poetry chapbook. FLOWN—an elegy-in-verse to her late sister—was published by Porkbelly Press in 2024. A third chapbook, Dirty Bird & Myrt, will be published by Dancing Girl Press in 2026. Jennes is poet laureate emerita of Ridgefield, CT, where she directs the Poetry in the Garden festival each summer and hosts “Poems from Connecticut’s Four Corners,” a monthly online reading series.

Romy Rhoads Ewing (she/her) writes from Sacramento, CA, where she was born and raised.  Her work has appeared in HAD, Oyez Review, Rejection Letters, Bullshit Lit, Major 7th Magazine, and more. Her poetry chapbook please stay was published in 2024 by Bottlecap Press. Her hybrid zine, someday [everybody but] us will laugh about all of this, was briefly physically distributed at the 3rd Annual Hallow-Zine Fest and is available digitally. She also edits poetry and nonfiction for JAKE and runs the archival site SACRAMENTO DIRTBAG ARCHIVES. She can be found at romyrhoadsewing.xyz


The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: FLOWN by B. Fulton Jennes

This selection, chosen by Guest Editor Romy Ewing, is from FLOWN by B. Fulton Jennes (Porkbelly Press 2024).

My Dying Sister’s Words Are Gone

It’s no use to call now. I buy
signal lamps instead.

I touch my lamp
and hers glows pink.

She touches back,
my lamp glows blue.

All those years we didn’t talk.
Now we signal.

Pink. Blue. Pink.

In Sunday school we sang
This little light of mine

I’m gonna let it shine.
Hide it under a bushel?

Hers was always
the loudest no!

Now even the song
is gone.

The poems of B. Fulton Jennes have appeared widely in literary journals and anthologies, including Comstock Review, MER, Rust and Moth, SWWIM, and Tupelo Quarterly. She is the winner of the 2025 Subnivean Award, the 2023 Millennium Award, the 2022 Lascaux Prize, as well as many other poetry competitions. Her collection Blinded Birds received the 2022 International Book Award for a poetry chapbook. FLOWN—an elegy-in-verse to her late sister—was published by Porkbelly Press in 2024. A third chapbook, Dirty Bird & Myrt, will be published by Dancing Girl Press in 2026. Jennes is poet laureate emerita of Ridgefield, CT, where she directs the Poetry in the Garden festival each summer and hosts “Poems from Connecticut’s Four Corners,” a monthly online reading series.

Romy Rhoads Ewing (she/her) writes from Sacramento, CA, where she was born and raised.  Her work has appeared in HAD, Oyez Review, Rejection Letters, Bullshit Lit, Major 7th Magazine, and more. Her poetry chapbook please stay was published in 2024 by Bottlecap Press. Her hybrid zine, someday [everybody but] us will laugh about all of this, was briefly physically distributed at the 3rd Annual Hallow-Zine Fest and is available digitally. She also edits poetry and nonfiction for JAKE and runs the archival site SACRAMENTO DIRTBAG ARCHIVES. She can be found at romyrhoadsewing.xyz


The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: FLOWN by B. Fulton Jennes

This selection, chosen by Guest Editor Romy Ewing, is from FLOWN by B. Fulton Jennes (Porkbelly Press 2024).

Content Warning: animal death

What My Dying Sister Believed, Then Didn’t

The farmer yanks our dog,
shot dead for killing his chickens,

from his tractor bed,
thumps her onto the porch floor.

I’ll bury her in that damned hole
you three dug our father says.

I finger blood-crusted fur,
long for my sister’s comfort.

But she won’t come out
to say goodbye, tells me

That’s just her body.
Sally’s already in heaven.

Years later—married, converted—
she speaks of Sheol, the Hebrew

house of the dead. There’s no heaven
she tells me now.

The poems of B. Fulton Jennes have appeared widely in literary journals and anthologies, including Comstock Review, MER, Rust and Moth, SWWIM, and Tupelo Quarterly. She is the winner of the 2025 Subnivean Award, the 2023 Millennium Award, the 2022 Lascaux Prize, as well as many other poetry competitions. Her collection Blinded Birds received the 2022 International Book Award for a poetry chapbook. FLOWN—an elegy-in-verse to her late sister—was published by Porkbelly Press in 2024. A third chapbook, Dirty Bird & Myrt, will be published by Dancing Girl Press in 2026. Jennes is poet laureate emerita of Ridgefield, CT, where she directs the Poetry in the Garden festival each summer and hosts “Poems from Connecticut’s Four Corners,” a monthly online reading series.

Romy Rhoads Ewing (she/her) writes from Sacramento, CA, where she was born and raised.  Her work has appeared in HAD, Oyez Review, Rejection Letters, Bullshit Lit, Major 7th Magazine, and more. Her poetry chapbook please stay was published in 2024 by Bottlecap Press. Her hybrid zine, someday [everybody but] us will laugh about all of this, was briefly physically distributed at the 3rd Annual Hallow-Zine Fest and is available digitally. She also edits poetry and nonfiction for JAKE and runs the archival site SACRAMENTO DIRTBAG ARCHIVES. She can be found at romyrhoadsewing.xyz


The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: FLOWN by B. Fulton Jennes

This selection, chosen by Guest Editor Romy Ewing, is from FLOWN by B. Fulton Jennes (Porkbelly Press 2024).

What’s an Atheist? I Ask My Dying Sister, 1965

A Christmas Eve visit
to a widow’s home.

She’s an atheist, our father hisses.
Don’t say a word about presents.

What’s an atheist? I ask
on the widow’s doorstep.

She puts a finger to her lips,
tightens her grip on my hand.

Someone who doesn’t believe
in God. In Jesus. In heaven.

Not even in heaven? I whisper.
Where will she go when she dies?

In a box. In a hole.
In the dirt.

The poems of B. Fulton Jennes have appeared widely in literary journals and anthologies, including Comstock Review, MER, Rust and Moth, SWWIM, and Tupelo Quarterly. She is the winner of the 2025 Subnivean Award, the 2023 Millennium Award, the 2022 Lascaux Prize, as well as many other poetry competitions. Her collection Blinded Birds received the 2022 International Book Award for a poetry chapbook. FLOWN—an elegy-in-verse to her late sister—was published by Porkbelly Press in 2024. A third chapbook, Dirty Bird & Myrt, will be published by Dancing Girl Press in 2026. Jennes is poet laureate emerita of Ridgefield, CT, where she directs the Poetry in the Garden festival each summer and hosts “Poems from Connecticut’s Four Corners,” a monthly online reading series.

Romy Rhoads Ewing (she/her) writes from Sacramento, CA, where she was born and raised.  Her work has appeared in HAD, Oyez Review, Rejection Letters, Bullshit Lit, Major 7th Magazine, and more. Her poetry chapbook please stay was published in 2024 by Bottlecap Press. Her hybrid zine, someday [everybody but] us will laugh about all of this, was briefly physically distributed at the 3rd Annual Hallow-Zine Fest and is available digitally. She also edits poetry and nonfiction for JAKE and runs the archival site SACRAMENTO DIRTBAG ARCHIVES. She can be found at romyrhoadsewing.xyz


The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Mapping the Borderlands by Barbara Sabol

This selection, chosen by Guest Editor Romy Ewing, is from Mapping the Borderlands by Barbara Sabol (Sheila-Na-Gig Editions 2025).

Willingly

If  the  last sound I hear  is a whir of sparrows, an  all-at-once ascent  from the apple
tree, air  pulsing  above  the branches, it would be a kind of permission. Like the luff
of a sheet flung above the  bed, again and again. That great  whoosh  of air takes  me
far  out on the water, the  sail breathing  in and out. Coastline  fading  like memory.

immense heaven
feeling the tug
of other galaxies

Light  sifts  through  the blinds tonight the way  my  mother  sifted  cake  flour  into  a
blue  porcelain bowl.  A dusting  of  twilight  now  on the  chair,  across  the  vanity. In
her  last  days  my  mother  swore  she  saw  wings  on  the  wall  of her  hospice  room.
First,  it was  a large  bird. Later,  an airplane. Look,  she  would  say,  hoisting  herself
up on her elbows, can’t you see the wings there on the wall? Not  a  shadow  of wings,
but the  wings themselves. She  was insistent. It’s just the  light  playing  tricks, Mom.
What else could I say?

But I’ll admit that sometimes I can see the moon fall across the water, even though
I  live  inland  from  the  shore.  I  hear  its  swash,  the   riffle  of  beach  pebbles.  A
commotion of gulls.

glass lake
trailing my fingers
through the clouds

Barbara Sabol (she/her) lives in Akron, Ohio, close to the Cuyahoga Valley National Park, whose trails she knows by heart. She was named Ohio co-Poet of the Year for her sixth book, WATERMARK: Poems of the Great Johnstown Flood of 1889 (Alternating Current Press, 2023). Her book, IMAGINE A TOWN, won the 2019 Sheila-Na-Gig Editions Poetry Prize. Other honors include an Individual Excellence Award from the Ohio Arts Council, and the Arts Alive Outstanding Literary Artist of 2024 award. Barbara’s haiku and haibun have been published widely, and her haibun have been recognized by the Haiku Society of America, short-listed for a Touchstone Award by the Haiku Foundation in 2024, and awarded a 2025 Rachel Sutcliffe Haiku-Arts Prize. Barbara conducts workshops through Literary Cleveland and the Cuyahoga Falls Library. She earned an MFA from Spalding University. When not at her desk, Barbara is working in her garden or walking in the woods. She lives with her bird carver husband and wonder dog.

Romy Rhoads Ewing (she/her) writes from Sacramento, CA, where she was born and raised.  Her work has appeared in HAD, Oyez Review, Rejection Letters, Bullshit Lit, Major 7th Magazine, and more. Her poetry chapbook please stay was published in 2024 by Bottlecap Press. Her hybrid zine, someday [everybody but] us will laugh about all of this, was briefly physically distributed at the 3rd Annual Hallow-Zine Fest and is available digitally. She also edits poetry and nonfiction for JAKE and runs the archival site SACRAMENTO DIRTBAG ARCHIVES. She can be found at romyrhoadsewing.xyz


The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Mapping the Borderlands by Barbara Sabol

This selection, chosen by Guest Editor Romy Ewing, is from Mapping the Borderlands by Barbara Sabol (Sheila-Na-Gig Editions 2025).

Letting the Kneeler Down

Forgive me the absence of all feeling. My heart a pink spike.
I am a disposable animal, in exile from heaven. A bitter thing.
You must see I am attached to earth’s delights—dark red petals,
sap frothing and rising. Distant father, are you stirred also?
I see beauty on either side of heaven: here, a yellow bird;
there, pleated wings, white fire.

Unreachable father, could you possibly exist? Lies have passed
between us like tiny aphids on the trailing rose. And silence.
If I say I love you, will you lift the weight of solitude? I speak
to you on my knees, my hands an empty clump of longing.

                             after evening rain
                             dark birds fold their wings

—cento sourced from the eight “Matins” poems from The Wild Iris by Louise Glück

Barbara Sabol (she/her) lives in Akron, Ohio, close to the Cuyahoga Valley National Park, whose trails she knows by heart. She was named Ohio co-Poet of the Year for her sixth book, WATERMARK: Poems of the Great Johnstown Flood of 1889 (Alternating Current Press, 2023). Her book, IMAGINE A TOWN, won the 2019 Sheila-Na-Gig Editions Poetry Prize. Other honors include an Individual Excellence Award from the Ohio Arts Council, and the Arts Alive Outstanding Literary Artist of 2024 award. Barbara’s haiku and haibun have been published widely, and her haibun have been recognized by the Haiku Society of America, short-listed for a Touchstone Award by the Haiku Foundation in 2024, and awarded a 2025 Rachel Sutcliffe Haiku-Arts Prize. Barbara conducts workshops through Literary Cleveland and the Cuyahoga Falls Library. She earned an MFA from Spalding University. When not at her desk, Barbara is working in her garden or walking in the woods. She lives with her bird carver husband and wonder dog.

Romy Rhoads Ewing (she/her) writes from Sacramento, CA, where she was born and raised.  Her work has appeared in HAD, Oyez Review, Rejection Letters, Bullshit Lit, Major 7th Magazine, and more. Her poetry chapbook please stay was published in 2024 by Bottlecap Press. Her hybrid zine, someday [everybody but] us will laugh about all of this, was briefly physically distributed at the 3rd Annual Hallow-Zine Fest and is available digitally. She also edits poetry and nonfiction for JAKE and runs the archival site SACRAMENTO DIRTBAG ARCHIVES. She can be found at romyrhoadsewing.xyz


The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Mapping the Borderlands by Barbara Sabol

This selection, chosen by Guest Editor Romy Ewing, is from Mapping the Borderlands by Barbara Sabol (Sheila-Na-Gig Editions 2025).

In the Wound of Night

                —after Constantin Brâncuşi’s sculpture, Sleeping Muse

I envy her perfection. More than beauty, her tranquility,
like a level’s bubble, centered, even in this busy, brightly lit
gallery. A dream blooms inside the elegant head, at rest
on a pedestal. Cast in white marble, an ageless patina smooths
brow and cheek. The air around her shapes itself into clean,
linear features—an abstraction of woman, one you might know
at midnight; an evocation in the morning.

moon flower—
the night garden
fragrant with light

Tonight, in my ink dark bedroom, I imagine her crescent cheek
cradled on the pillow next to mine. Her mouth is inscrutable.
The marble softens at the Cupid’s bow, allowing only the slightest
parting of her lips. I taste her cool breath as she descends into the deep
end of sleep; into a pool of lassitude.

A smile plays at the corners of her mouth. Her dreams must be
sweet, and so magically elsewhere. Lapis skies swirl with gold stars.
Exotic forests with sated tigers. I, too, close my eyes but my dreams
tousle out in the hall of my childhood home where people move
through dim rooms. There, no one has ever died. Everything
and nothing changed.

the ceiling fan’s
rhythmic pulse—
missyou missyou missyou

Barbara Sabol (she/her) lives in Akron, Ohio, close to the Cuyahoga Valley National Park, whose trails she knows by heart. She was named Ohio co-Poet of the Year for her sixth book, WATERMARK: Poems of the Great Johnstown Flood of 1889 (Alternating Current Press, 2023). Her book, IMAGINE A TOWN, won the 2019 Sheila-Na-Gig Editions Poetry Prize. Other honors include an Individual Excellence Award from the Ohio Arts Council, and the Arts Alive Outstanding Literary Artist of 2024 award. Barbara’s haiku and haibun have been published widely, and her haibun have been recognized by the Haiku Society of America, short-listed for a Touchstone Award by the Haiku Foundation in 2024, and awarded a 2025 Rachel Sutcliffe Haiku-Arts Prize. Barbara conducts workshops through Literary Cleveland and the Cuyahoga Falls Library. She earned an MFA from Spalding University. When not at her desk, Barbara is working in her garden or walking in the woods. She lives with her bird carver husband and wonder dog.

Romy Rhoads Ewing (she/her) writes from Sacramento, CA, where she was born and raised.  Her work has appeared in HAD, Oyez Review, Rejection Letters, Bullshit Lit, Major 7th Magazine, and more. Her poetry chapbook please stay was published in 2024 by Bottlecap Press. Her hybrid zine, someday [everybody but] us will laugh about all of this, was briefly physically distributed at the 3rd Annual Hallow-Zine Fest and is available digitally. She also edits poetry and nonfiction for JAKE and runs the archival site SACRAMENTO DIRTBAG ARCHIVES. She can be found at romyrhoadsewing.xyz


The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Mapping the Borderlands by Barbara Sabol

This selection, chosen by Guest Editor Romy Ewing, is from Mapping the Borderlands by Barbara Sabol (Sheila-Na-Gig Editions 2025).

Chimera

Trick of the light, I think, when the seal’s head crests in the water
of this small cove where I’m swimming. A distance of ten strokes.
Less. We keep that distance a long minute―me treading water, riveted.
The seal dips, rises, turns a dark eye toward me. Curious, but not enough
to come closer. On impulse I swim out to where he last dove. Just
sunlight there, spangling the water.

sand mandala. . .
the journey inward
until the wind

Barbara Sabol (she/her) lives in Akron, Ohio, close to the Cuyahoga Valley National Park, whose trails she knows by heart. She was named Ohio co-Poet of the Year for her sixth book, WATERMARK: Poems of the Great Johnstown Flood of 1889 (Alternating Current Press, 2023). Her book, IMAGINE A TOWN, won the 2019 Sheila-Na-Gig Editions Poetry Prize. Other honors include an Individual Excellence Award from the Ohio Arts Council, and the Arts Alive Outstanding Literary Artist of 2024 award. Barbara’s haiku and haibun have been published widely, and her haibun have been recognized by the Haiku Society of America, short-listed for a Touchstone Award by the Haiku Foundation in 2024, and awarded a 2025 Rachel Sutcliffe Haiku-Arts Prize. Barbara conducts workshops through Literary Cleveland and the Cuyahoga Falls Library. She earned an MFA from Spalding University. When not at her desk, Barbara is working in her garden or walking in the woods. She lives with her bird carver husband and wonder dog.

Romy Rhoads Ewing (she/her) writes from Sacramento, CA, where she was born and raised.  Her work has appeared in HAD, Oyez Review, Rejection Letters, Bullshit Lit, Major 7th Magazine, and more. Her poetry chapbook please stay was published in 2024 by Bottlecap Press. Her hybrid zine, someday [everybody but] us will laugh about all of this, was briefly physically distributed at the 3rd Annual Hallow-Zine Fest and is available digitally. She also edits poetry and nonfiction for JAKE and runs the archival site SACRAMENTO DIRTBAG ARCHIVES. She can be found at romyrhoadsewing.xyz