Good Dress by Brittany Rogers
Reviewed by Deborah D.E.E.P. Mouton
Coming-of-age stories usually conjure tales of first loves, heartbreak, and the birth of lifelong friendships. The naivete of adolescence leads to fumbles and errors that can only be attributed to young ignorance. Sometimes trite and often predictable, coming-of-age feels relatable by mimicking our own journeys to understand who we want to be. Rarely does it make room for queerness, for motherhood, or for a speaker to stumble on accepting an identity they always knew was there, but could only dream to live out loud. Brittany Rogers' Good Dress manages to do all of the above. This powerful, quick read makes space to consider one's own self as a true first love, both queer and woman, centered in the heart of Detroit.
Despite this being her debut collection, the Editor In Chief of Muzzle Magazine and 2025 finalist for Lambda Literary's Bisexual Poetry is no stranger to crafting a good poem. With work published in Oprah Daily, The Indiana Review, and the Mississippi Review, among others, and as a former fellow with VONA, The Watering Hole, Poetry Incubator, and Pink Door Writing Retreat, Rogers work carves out a necessary groove for the Black femme perspective. This collection examines place, sexuality, and womaness, turning everyday forms (such as clinical notes, library slips, and micropoems) into the perfect vehicles for surprising poetic expression.
Good Dress is as much an ode to self as it is a loving portrait of Detroit thriving to survive. Much like the speaker, the city finds itself redefining its identity through economic shifts and changes. With multiple poems taking place throughout Detroit's public library system, readers are enveloped by how the city declines as it shutters in the shadow of the Ford and GM closures. In "Blackout, August 2003, Detroit," Rogers pays homage to the "biggest power outage that the US ever saw" at the Michigan Radio Newsroom. But this milestone event, one that should typically be laced with fear and dread, becomes a breeding ground for community connection:
The grills turn up. Somebody speakers
Serenade all our porches, and we jam,
Smoke-soaked and lawless, all open
Hormones in this powerless field.
This ode to people navigating a broken system shows how those who have the least often make joy out of the darkest moments. In a "city [that] don't know how to tell us apart in the daylight" one must shine a light on themselves. Rogers recounts skating in roller rinks, lifting chains for the Ice Cam at sporting events, refusing to return erotic books until well past their due date. The speaker reclaims the joy of growing up in the Motor City, and somehow transforms that specific experience into something more universal- more human. She demonstrates that joy is a choice—one that is unhindered by marginalization and poverty. It is within these meager moments and tight spaces that rebellion and discovery become the most treasured. This is more apparent in the poem "Bedside Baptist:"
I'm not fit for the Lord's
House:crop top
Bonnet, boy shorts.
Lust-drunk. Giddy
Off my own perfume.
The speaker lies in bed watching Fantasia sing Total Praise, flinging her arms up in worship. She deems herself unfit for God and simultaneously holy. This poem, however, does not oppose religion or spirituality by abstaining from traditional service. Rogers is making room for a kind of church that lives at her own bedside.The speaker’s mother shamed her for wearing jeans. But in this moment of free celebration, the speaker finds a worthiness of self:
At home, I am my own
Priest, I offer my shrill
Praise. Proud
. Loud. So rowdy,
He runs in
To see about me.
Within this collection, Rogers chooses to approach common themes and emotions from new angles and approaches. She often amplifies power, joy, and self advocacy over victimhood- this extends into the spectrum of sexuality. The first poem in the collection doesn't start young and unknowing, but rather fully conceived in thought and clear want.
I want to perch
Straight-backed
And haughty pat my pussy
Shoulder roll
Damn I'm fine
The speaker's sexuality is birthed in the beat of Cardi B's song "Money". It is one that believes there is a power in claiming one's own body fully and owning the ways it moves. Rogers uses this poem, out of chronological time, to establish the speaker as no one's victim. Though she discovers herself through early spontaneous sexual encounters and recounts motherhood leaving her nipples dry and cracking in later poems, there is seemingly no regret. Instead, Rogers uses these moments as building blocks of self reclamation:
The chorus of catcalls licked my back
As I passed, hips tender, swaying
Like too-tall grass
Fooled them. Most girls would shy
Away. I glutton. I devour.
I don't wait to be made a meal of.
Her poem “Hunting Hours” is not bogged down by shame the way early experiences with catcalls are typically portrayed. Instead the speaker flips the script and becomes the hunter herself, gathering the unsolicited comments for her own pleasure.
I plucked the first boy from his porch
Then the next. The next.
And Him, too.
She is in control, not only of what happens to her, but how she allows her body to be a trophy case for experiences. It is a shift of intention that is masterfully executed by Rogers. She finds a way to both admonish the way that young Black girls are oversexualized and taken advantage of without lowering their value after the experience.
This eye for balancing conventional wisdom with meaningful commentary influences Roger's use of form. While traditional poetry forms make an appearance in the collection, the more exciting parts of this book are where Rogers uses found forms such as clinical psychiatric notes, erasure, medical surveys, overdue library slips to build her poems. Over the five sections that span this collection, Rogers is observer, clinician, and patient.
The third section is built entirely of unnamed micropoems that read like small prose pebbles lining a pastoral trail. They harken to the speaker's family history from Alabama, through the Great Migration, and finally landing in Detroit:
Everywhere I'm from is theory
I gather a bouquet of maps
And mark: We Were Here under
The factory. In front of that old
Catholic church. Where the eggshell
House was torn out of the frame-
Yes, there under the freeway's
Thin ankles
The transient nature of belonging feels ancestral. Not only does place change who the person can become, the arrival at one's self feels like moving into a new home. In that way, Rogers offers that the journey her bloodline has been on has been more than finding a place to settle. It has been a passing down of a desire to find a place that feels like home. For our speaker, there is no place more like home than dreaming her desires aloud.
The grit and resilience of the Motor City lives in every line and pulse of this debut collection. Rogers celebrates the overlooked, champions the difficult moments, and finds joy in an often forgotten city. The poems serve as a record, one not solely anchored in puberty or adolescence, but more a coming to accept one's skin like a good dress that can't be ruined by reputation, experimentation, or being someone who thrives outside of society's norms. Instead of searching for memorable moments to encapsulate, it teaches the reader that "Everything keeping [us] alive is the most beautiful."
Despite this being her debut collection, the Editor In Chief of Muzzle Magazine and 2025 finalist for Lambda Literary's Bisexual Poetry is no stranger to crafting a good poem. With work published in Oprah Daily, The Indiana Review, and the Mississippi Review, among others, and as a former fellow with VONA, The Watering Hole, Poetry Incubator, and Pink Door Writing Retreat, Rogers work carves out a necessary groove for the Black femme perspective. This collection examines place, sexuality, and womaness, turning everyday forms (such as clinical notes, library slips, and micropoems) into the perfect vehicles for surprising poetic expression.
Good Dress is as much an ode to self as it is a loving portrait of Detroit thriving to survive. Much like the speaker, the city finds itself redefining its identity through economic shifts and changes. With multiple poems taking place throughout Detroit's public library system, readers are enveloped by how the city declines as it shutters in the shadow of the Ford and GM closures. In "Blackout, August 2003, Detroit," Rogers pays homage to the "biggest power outage that the US ever saw" at the Michigan Radio Newsroom. But this milestone event, one that should typically be laced with fear and dread, becomes a breeding ground for community connection:
The grills turn up. Somebody speakers
Serenade all our porches, and we jam,
Smoke-soaked and lawless, all open
Hormones in this powerless field.
This ode to people navigating a broken system shows how those who have the least often make joy out of the darkest moments. In a "city [that] don't know how to tell us apart in the daylight" one must shine a light on themselves. Rogers recounts skating in roller rinks, lifting chains for the Ice Cam at sporting events, refusing to return erotic books until well past their due date. The speaker reclaims the joy of growing up in the Motor City, and somehow transforms that specific experience into something more universal- more human. She demonstrates that joy is a choice—one that is unhindered by marginalization and poverty. It is within these meager moments and tight spaces that rebellion and discovery become the most treasured. This is more apparent in the poem "Bedside Baptist:"
I'm not fit for the Lord's
House:crop top
Bonnet, boy shorts.
Lust-drunk. Giddy
Off my own perfume.
The speaker lies in bed watching Fantasia sing Total Praise, flinging her arms up in worship. She deems herself unfit for God and simultaneously holy. This poem, however, does not oppose religion or spirituality by abstaining from traditional service. Rogers is making room for a kind of church that lives at her own bedside.The speaker’s mother shamed her for wearing jeans. But in this moment of free celebration, the speaker finds a worthiness of self:
At home, I am my own
Priest, I offer my shrill
Praise. Proud
. Loud. So rowdy,
He runs in
To see about me.
Within this collection, Rogers chooses to approach common themes and emotions from new angles and approaches. She often amplifies power, joy, and self advocacy over victimhood- this extends into the spectrum of sexuality. The first poem in the collection doesn't start young and unknowing, but rather fully conceived in thought and clear want.
I want to perch
Straight-backed
And haughty pat my pussy
Shoulder roll
Damn I'm fine
The speaker's sexuality is birthed in the beat of Cardi B's song "Money". It is one that believes there is a power in claiming one's own body fully and owning the ways it moves. Rogers uses this poem, out of chronological time, to establish the speaker as no one's victim. Though she discovers herself through early spontaneous sexual encounters and recounts motherhood leaving her nipples dry and cracking in later poems, there is seemingly no regret. Instead, Rogers uses these moments as building blocks of self reclamation:
The chorus of catcalls licked my back
As I passed, hips tender, swaying
Like too-tall grass
Fooled them. Most girls would shy
Away. I glutton. I devour.
I don't wait to be made a meal of.
Her poem “Hunting Hours” is not bogged down by shame the way early experiences with catcalls are typically portrayed. Instead the speaker flips the script and becomes the hunter herself, gathering the unsolicited comments for her own pleasure.
I plucked the first boy from his porch
Then the next. The next.
And Him, too.
She is in control, not only of what happens to her, but how she allows her body to be a trophy case for experiences. It is a shift of intention that is masterfully executed by Rogers. She finds a way to both admonish the way that young Black girls are oversexualized and taken advantage of without lowering their value after the experience.
This eye for balancing conventional wisdom with meaningful commentary influences Roger's use of form. While traditional poetry forms make an appearance in the collection, the more exciting parts of this book are where Rogers uses found forms such as clinical psychiatric notes, erasure, medical surveys, overdue library slips to build her poems. Over the five sections that span this collection, Rogers is observer, clinician, and patient.
The third section is built entirely of unnamed micropoems that read like small prose pebbles lining a pastoral trail. They harken to the speaker's family history from Alabama, through the Great Migration, and finally landing in Detroit:
Everywhere I'm from is theory
I gather a bouquet of maps
And mark: We Were Here under
The factory. In front of that old
Catholic church. Where the eggshell
House was torn out of the frame-
Yes, there under the freeway's
Thin ankles
The transient nature of belonging feels ancestral. Not only does place change who the person can become, the arrival at one's self feels like moving into a new home. In that way, Rogers offers that the journey her bloodline has been on has been more than finding a place to settle. It has been a passing down of a desire to find a place that feels like home. For our speaker, there is no place more like home than dreaming her desires aloud.
The grit and resilience of the Motor City lives in every line and pulse of this debut collection. Rogers celebrates the overlooked, champions the difficult moments, and finds joy in an often forgotten city. The poems serve as a record, one not solely anchored in puberty or adolescence, but more a coming to accept one's skin like a good dress that can't be ruined by reputation, experimentation, or being someone who thrives outside of society's norms. Instead of searching for memorable moments to encapsulate, it teaches the reader that "Everything keeping [us] alive is the most beautiful."
Deborah D.E.E.P. Mouton is an internationally-known writer, educator, activist, performer, and and the first Black Poet Laureate of Houston, Texas. Formerly ranked the #2 Best Female Performance Poet in the World, Her recent poetry collection, Newsworthy, garnered her a Pushcart nomination, was named a finalist for the 2019 Writer’s League of Texas Book Award, and received honorable mention for the Summerlee Book Prize. Its German translation, under the title Berichtenswert, is set to be released in Summer 2021 by Elif Verlag. She lives and creates in Houston, TX. For more information visit www.LiveLifedeep.com