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

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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.

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.

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