Day Merrill
Pajama Day—September 27, 2018
On the occasion of the Senate confirmation hearing of Brett Kavanaugh as nominee for Supreme Court Justice
Pajamas are the refuge of girls and women.
We stay in them to ride out a snow day or cramps,
we curl up in them to read alone and wear them to sleepovers.
They are our safety blanket.
They remind us of childhood and innocence,
what we put on after a hot bath,
basketball practice,
a debate team victory.
Pajamas are the great leveler.
Whatever we wear during the day—
the business suit with killer heels,
the school uniform with the skirt rolled up,
the scrubs under the white coat that bestows legitimacy—
when we come home and get into our PJs,
we are all that teenage girl happy to just be,
without the need to create any impression.
I spent the entire day in my pajamas yesterday,
glued to CNN as the confirmation hearing
raised my hopes, then confirmed my fears.
Advice to all women:
Never forget (or underestimate) how much they hate us.
Our very existence is an insult to the privileged patriarchy
that blusters and blubbers like a thwarted preppie
when we have the audacity to call out their actions and lies
while trying to remain “collegial”
wishing we could be more “helpful”
barely maintaining our shaken composure.
Yesterday was our Kent State—proof we are finally on our own.
Sworn testimony from three women dismissed as untrue or irrelevant
by alpha males who trumpet their support for a sexual predator
like bull elephants protecting a watering hole.
After the hearings ended, I stripped off my pajamas and got dressed,
readying myself for leaving the house to
walk the dog, visit a friend, meet a client,
vote.
Day Merrill’s poems have appeared in The Binnacle, Halcyon Magazine, HIV Here & Now, Poems in the Aftermath, What Rough Beast, The Journal of Contemporary Rural Social Work, Tin Roof Press and Quick Brown Fox, among others, as well as in the Collingwood Public Library Writers Group anthology Musings. After a career as an English teacher and a university administrator, she became a career coach. Raised in New England and a former long-time resident of New York City, Merrill now splits her time between Ontario and Costa Rica.
Indolent Books and editor Michael Broder are back with another poem-a-day series to help us process the emerging neofascist autocracy. Initially planned to start on Inauguration Day, things got so…interesting (?) that I could not hold out any longer, and so now we are counting down the days to the inauguration in poems. Back soon with info on how to submit.