for summer blue and white seersucker
my sister froze when she saw me in it
I took it when he died and I’ve washed it
because of how he liked to beat us
a thousand times it’s ankle-length and almost like
how he used to spend his time lying to us mocking
women’s clothes the arms not too long for me
why was I wearing it couldn’t I feel the poison
sometimes I garden in it because it’s cool and
how could I put it on as if it made me sentimental
because I know he used to care about such things
about him destroying our lives I must be deluded
he was a crazy motherfucker but I have changed
the damage he would do the cruelty
I have made the bathrobe something good that’s all my own
Cammy Thomas’ first book of poems, Cathedral of Wish, received the 2006 Norma Farber First Book Award from the Poetry Society of America. A fellowship from the Ragdale Foundation helped her complete her second book, Inscriptions (2014). Her newest collection, Tremors, is forthcoming in 2021. All are published by Four Way Books. Her poems have recently appeared or are forthcoming in Image Journal, Tampa Review, The Missouri Review, and Salamander, and in the anthology, Poems in the Aftermath (Indolent Books). She lives in Lexington, Massachusetts.
