Stripping Down

Her clothes choke with textures:
silk layers slide under nubby wool.
The denim shorts she hacked from jeans
have frayed to a matted cotton edge.
Colors, too, scramble over her like weeds
whose flowers contrast with a plaid lawn.

She ignores the rules that always existed:
never lace with leather,
gold and silver, precious and fake.
She wears a mixture of what anyone
once said matched her eyes,
lit her smile or slimmed her thighs.

This is how she dresses for people:
all her relationships bunched together
and creased, their dissenting demands
interlaced into the weave
of her fabric, which she must wash
often and hang out to dry.

She hungers for the simple cloth of herself,
one pink skin which unfolds like shaken linen.
She gives its clean surface to him
with no trappings other than earrings
and tattoos, loves how he needs nothing
from her except this body, nude.

Previously appeared in Verse Libre Quarterly




Index Of Published Poems