Tag: dress

My grandmother asks what size my dress is by Lucy De Maio

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My grandmother asks what size my dress is

I want to tell her, infinity. The biggest number.
The sum of every meal I’ve missed. The total count
of every bone in my body that weakened when starved,
thinning into things just as destructive as they were
destroyed. A value greater than every time she’s asked.
An irrational number, one that spirals like we both do,
one that oscillates to the point of collapse. The kind of
number that you don’t even know how to read aloud.
A number so towering and imaginary you can feel it
encroaching on your space, your brain, that little corner
that does the calculating, the panicking, tracks the hours
wasted wondering if the limit exists, if one can approach zero.
A number no one will discover. The result of adding the tags
of every dress I’ve ever bought, every unflattering waist
I’ve regretted. The sum of every sliver of shallow hope
born from flat morning stomachs. The product given by
multiplying instability with ignorance, the kind that
unconditional love can never excuse. The quantity
measured when you stack up every minute we two have
drained thinking about our bodies instead of living in them.
The number you get when you trace the family tree,
adding up every woman sucking in her abdomen in the
photo, hoping the universe will swallow it, hoping her
daughter granddaughter great granddaughter won’t have to
twist in her torso too— not hoping that she won’t.

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Lucy De Maio is Chicago Youth Poet Laureate 2026. She loves poetry that reclaims heritage, art that explores what it means to live in a body, and anything about trains.

THE ONLY DRESS YOU’LL EVER NEED by Ronda Piszk Broatch

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THE ONLY DRESS YOU’LL EVER NEED

Turn to sideview, it takes your breath away. It swings.
That the narrative your internal critic weaves begins

to fade is no illusion. This dress drips blue deep notes.
Wrinkles time. Pour your body like hot wax into its

merciful stitches. This shift thistles any suitcase, loads
a pack like thunder, takes to task the naysayers, owns it.

Icicle shards from every cliff, this is not your mama’s frock,
solid and pocketful. It shocks. Slips like the membrane you

were born in, nurtures your most internal desires. Full on
juicy, this gown bleeds pomegranate, cherry and plum.

Where sun and ocean horizon, this skintight caress of a
dress throws light-coins on the water at your feet. Go on,

sonnet with random abandon! Queen in it! This robe rocks
atomic, pulses glory in the most quantum way.

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Ronda Piszk Broatch is the author of Chaos Theory for Beginners (MoonPath Press, 2023), finalist for the Sally Albiso Prize, and Lake of Fallen Constellations, (MoonPath Press). She is the recipient of an Artist Trust GAP Grant. Ronda’s journal publications include Greensboro Review, Blackbird, Sycamore Review, Missouri Review, Palette Poetry, Moon City Review, and NPR News / KUOW’s All Things Considered. She is a graduate student working toward her MFA at Pacific Lutheran University’s Rainier Writing Workshop.