The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Affidavit by Starr Davis


This selection, chosen by Guest Editor Claudia Santos, is from Affidavit by Starr Davis (Hanging Loose Press 2026).

Content Warning: domestic violence

AFFIDAVIT II

A sworn statement:

I,              a resident of succulent places both mental and physical, came and appeared, eschatological as a woman pastored by papayas & Pendergrass records & predators both flesh and spirit, under penalty and personal knowledge, that few or all ecclesiastical things are correct:

THE—imperial—rule of my hips conjured a dream that could not be undreamt; all the men in my life have been mostly theory less Bible; niggas that I could love on accident and leave on purpose however, this one: a consequence of the unhealed in hotel rooms after tangerine suns bleed graceless, took my dream hostage for a night choked my last sweetest memory until I couldn’t taste any remnants of the most fabricated joy I could say I’ve witnessed, he is by a law, the nigga my mama never warned me about because he is the niggas we are born making excuses for; days before I delivered this dream of mine I thought of calling the police but he said me and my little dream would be dead before they found us and so, the drafted petition for domestic violence still etched in my bones is opaque;

THE MOVANT, who is mostly flesh not spirit, is not within the best interest of any dream(s) of mine


Starr Davis (she/her) is a poet and essayist whose work has appeared in The Kenyon Review, Academy of American Poet’s Poem-a-Day, and The Rumpus. She was the 2024 Writing Freedom Fellow with Haymarket Books and the Mellon Foundation. 

Claudia Santos (she/her) is a Mexican reader and writer. She received the PECDA Colima 2024 writing grant for her non-fiction work and was a Sophia-FILCO Young Writers 2025 finalist for her poetry work. She is currently pursuing an MA in Children’s Literature as a EMJM scholarship recipient.


sundresspublications

Leave a Reply