The Wardrobe's Best Dressed: Dubious Breath by Jennifer Davis Michael

This selection, chosen by guest editor H.V. Cramond, is from Dubious Breath by Jennifer Davis Michael (Finishing Line Press 2022).

Laying Out My Son’s Clothes

I still lay out my son’s clothes every night.
He doesn’t need this management. He’s eight,
and already resents my interference.
I make excuses, claiming it’s to save
time in the morning, stress on my voice,
the endless repetition of “Get dressed!”

—which is to say, Armor yourself against
the world, which already knows your nakedness;
the lies that lurk behind a trusted face;
the pathogens that slip between the seams
of masks, and haunt the margins of our dreams;
the bruised fruit that can never be untasted.

Jennifer Davis Michael grew up in Alabama, lived briefly in Oxford and Chicago, and has spent most of her adult life in Sewanee, Tennessee, where she is a professor of English and creative writing at the University of the South. Her academic specialty is British Romanticism, especially William Blake. Besides her scholarly monograph, Blake and the City (Bucknell, 2006), she has published two poetry chapbooks, both from Finishing Line Press: Let Me Let Go (2020) and Dubious Breath (2022). She is currently working on a full-length collection, Bodies at Rest.

H.V. Cramond holds an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and was the founding Poetry Editor of Requited Journal for 10 years. In 2018, she helped pass the Survivor’s Bill of Rights in Illinois as an organizer for Rise. Read more of her writing on her website.