“ ‘Jackie says, “Hey, Diane let’s run off behind a
shady tree
Dribble off those Bobbie Brooks, let me do what
I please.’”
John Cougar Mellencamp, “Jack and Diane”
“Beware of all enterprises that require new
clothes.”
Henry David Thoreau
Clothes by Anne Sexton (1928-1974)
Put on a clean shirt
before you die, some
Russian said.
Nothing with drool,
please,
no egg spots, no blood,
no sweat, no sperm.
You want me clean, God,
so I’ll try to comply.
The hat I was married in,
will it do?
White, broad, fake flowers in a tiny array.
It’s old-fashioned, as stylish as a bedbug,
but is suits to die in something nostalgic.
And I’ll take
my painting shirt
washed over and over of course
spotted with every yellow kitchen I’ve painted.
God, you don’t mind if I bring all my kitchens?
They hold the family laughter and the soup.
For a bra
(need we mention it?),
the padded black one that my lover demeaned
when I took it off.
He said, “Where’d it all go?”
And I’ll take
the maternity skirt of my ninth month,
a window for the love-belly
that let each baby pop out like and apple,
the water breaking in the restaurant,
making a noisy house I’d like to die in.
For underpants I’ll pick white cotton,
the briefs of my childhood,
for it was my mother’s dictum
that nice girls wore only white cotton.
If my mother had lived to see it
she would have put a WANTED sign up in the
post office
for the black, the red, the blue I’ve worn.
Still, it would be perfectly fine with me
to die like a nice girl
smelling of Clorox and Duz.
Being sixteen-in-the-pants
I would die full of questions.
Exchanging Hats by Elizabeth Bishop (19111979)
Unfunny uncles who insist
in trying on a lady’s hat,
--oh, even if the joke falls
flat,
we share your slight
transvestite twist
in spite of our
embarrassment.
Costume and custom are
complex.
The headgear of the other sex
inspires us to experiment.
Anandrous aunts, who, at the beach
with paper plates upon your laps,
keep putting on the yachtsmen’s caps
with exhibitionistic screech,
the visors hanging o’er the ear
so that the golden anchors drag,
--the tides of fashion never lag.
Such caps may not be worn next year.
Or you who don the paper plate
itself, and put some grapes upon it,
or sport the Indian’s feather bonnet,
--perversities may aggravate
the natural madness of the hatter.
And if the opera hats collapse
and crowns grow draughty, then, perhaps,
he thinks what might a miter matter?
Unfunny uncle, you who wore a
hat too big, or one too many,
tell us, can’t you, are there any
stars inside your black fedora?
Aunt exemplary and slim,
with avernal eyes, we wonder
what slow changes they see under
their vast, shady, turned-down brim.
Man in the Long Black Coat by Bob Dylan
(born 1941)
Crickets are chirpin’, the
water is high,
There’s a soft cotton dress
on the line hangin’ dry,
Window wide open,
African trees
Bent over backwards from
a hurricane breeze.
Not a word of goodbye,
note even a note,
She gone with the man
In the long black coat.
Somebody seen him hanging around
At the old dance hall on the outskirts of town,
He looked into her eyes when she stopped to ask
If he wanted to dance, he had a face like a mask.
Somebody said from the Bible he’d quote
There was dust on the man
In the long black coat.
Preacher was a talkin’ there’s a sermon he gave,
He said every man’s conscience is vile and
depraved,
You cannot depend on it to be your guide
When it’s you who must keep it satisfied.
It ain’t easy to swallow, it sticks in the throat,
She gave her heart to the man
In the long black coat.
There are no mistakes in life some people say
It is true sometimes you can see it that way.
Bridge: But people don’t live or die, people just
float.
She went with the man
In the long black coat.
There’s smoke on the water, it’s been there since
June,
Tree trunks uprooted, ‘neath the high crescent
moon
Feel the pulse and vibration and the rumbling
force
Somebody is out there beating the dead horse.
She never said nothing there was nothing she
wrote,
She gone with the man
In the long black coat.
Take heed, you who read
this,
& drop to your knees now &
again
like the poet Christopher
Smart,
& kiss the earth & be joyful,
& make much of your time,
& be kindly to everyone,
even to those who do not deserve it.
For although you may not believe
it will happen,
you too will one day be gone,
I, whose Levi’s ripped at the crotch
for no reason,
assure you that such is the case.
Pass it on.
Notice by Steve Kowit (born 1938)
This evening, the sturdy
Levi’s
I wore every day for over a
year
& which seemed to the end
in perfect condition,
suddenly tore.
How or why I don’t know,
but there it was: a big rip at
the crotch.
A month ago my friend Nick
walked off a racquetball
court,
showered,
got into this street clothes,
& halfway home collapsed &
died.
The Suits by Moniza Alvi (born 1954)
My father’s forties suit,
bought when he first came to
England,
pin-striped with broad lapels,
comfortingly chocolate, but
crisp.
He and his Pakistani friends
and their we-have-arrivedsuits.
In a black-and-white snap,
Dad sits on the grass at a
rural crossroads,
head in his hands, signs pointing
in all directions: Digswell, Welwyn,
Tewin Wood ... Even here, deep in the
countryside, he’s wearing
his suit. He’s handsome as a doctor, our
neighbour said.
My father and his friends, marvelled at wherever
they went, ordering
with a woman’s coat over his arm.
Clearly she would not need it.
The sunglasses he wore could not
conceal his wet face, his bafflement.
a sandwich at the Comet Hotel, or shopping on
the Barnet by-pass.
This was before Go back home! Their suits of
armour
As if in mockery the day was fair,
and the air mild for December. All the same
he had zipped his own coat and tied
the hood under his chin, preparing
for irremediable cold.
could have stood up without them. Walked on
and on.
The Voice by Thomas Hardy (1840-1928)
Woman much missed, how you call to me, call
to me,
Saying that now you are not as you were
When you had changed from the one who was
all to me,
But as at first, when our day was fair.
Can it be you that I hear? Let me view you, then,
Standing as when I drew near to the town
Where you would wait for me: yes, as I knew
you then,
Even to the original air-blue gown!
Or is it only the breeze in its listlessness
Travelling across the wet mead to me here,
You being ever dissolved to wan wistlessness,
Heard no more again far or near?
Thus I; faltering forward,
Leaves around me falling,
Wind oozing thin through the thorn from
norward,
And the woman calling.
Upon Julia’s Clothes by Robert Herrick
(1591-1674)
WHENAS in silks my Julia goes,
Then, then, methinks, how sweetly flows
That liquefaction of her clothes.
My Shoes by Charles Simic (born 1938)
Shoes, secret face of my inner life:
Two gaping toothless mouths,
Two partly decomposed animal skins
Smelling of mice nests.
My brother and sister who died at birth
Continuing their existence in you,
Guiding my life
Toward their incomprehensible innocence.
What use are books to me
When in you it is possible to read
The Gospel of my life on earth
And still beyond, of things to come?
I want to proclaim the religion
I have devised for your perfect humility
And the strange church I am building
With you as the altar.
Ascetic and maternal, you endure:
Kin to oxen, to Saints, to condemned men,
With your mute patience, forming
The only true likeness of myself.
Next, when I cast mine eyes and see
That brave vibration each way free;
O how that glittering taketh me!
The Pattern by Michael Longley (born 1939)
Coats by Jane Kenyon (1947-1995)
Thirty-six years, to the day,
after our wedding
I saw him leaving the hospital
When a cold figure-revealing
wind blew against you
And lifted your veil, I find in
its fat envelope
The six-shilling Vogue patern
for your bride’s dress,
Complicated instructions for
stitching bodice
And skirt, box pleats and
hems, tissue-paper outlines,
Semblances of skin which I
nervously unfold
And hold up in snow-light,
for snow has been falling
On this windless day, and I
glimpse your wedding dress
And white shoes outside in
the transformed garden
Where the clothes-line and
every twig have been
covered.
She wears the long series of wonder-awakening
dresses,
She wears the fish-skin cloak,
She wears the gown of pearl with the
constellations slashed into its dark lining,
She undresses out of the night sky, each night of
the year a different sky,
She wears altitude dresses and vertigo dresses,
She plucks open the long staircase at the neck
with the big buttons of bird skulls in the white
dress of sow-thistle,
She has leather britches known to be chimpskin,
She has combed star-rays into a shaggy nightdress,
She has a bodice of bone-flounces, a turbinal
blouse through which the air pours,
There is a gown she has that shimmers without
slit or seam like the wall of an aquarium:
A starfish moves slowly on its pumps across her
bosom,
A shark glides, a turtle rows silently between her
knees,
And she adopts in turn the long dress of sewn
louse-skin,
The romper suit of purple jam packed with tiny
oval seeds,
The foggy grey dress, and lapping between its
folds
Echo bird-cries and meteor noises and
declarations of love,
The ball gown of ticker-tape,
The evening dress of flexible swirling
clockwork running against time,
The cocktail dress of bloody smoke and bullet torn bandages,
And the little black dress of gravel-soil that
rends and seals as she turns.
Often she sits up all night in the philosopher’s
library
Sewing strong patches from his wardrobes of
thought
Into her wounded dresses.
Woman With Girdle by Anne Sexton (1928–
1974)
Wardrobe Lady by Peter Redgrove (19322003)
Your midriff sags toward your knees;
your breasts lie down in air,
their nipples as uninvolved
as warm starfish.
You stand in your elastic case,
still not giving up the new-born
and the old-born cycle.
Moving, you roll down the garment,
down that pink snapper and hoarder,
as your belly, soft as pudding,
slops into the empty space;
down, over the surgeon’s careful mark,
down over hips, those head cushions
and mouth cushions,
slow motion like a rolling pin,
over crisp hairs, that amazing field
that hides your genius from your patron;
over thighs, thick as young pigs,
over knees like saucers,
over calves, polished as leather,
down toward the feet.
You pause for a moment,
tying your ankles into knots.
Now you rise,
a city from the sea,
born long before Alexandria was,
straighway from God you have come
into your redeeming skin.
http://girdlezone.org/literatu.htm
After My Arrest by Judith Clark (born 1949
[maybe]; member, Weatherman
Underground)
among the everyday
pieces lost
a bright pink Indian cotton shirt
worn through months of
nursing, quickly unbuttoned
to bring the rooting baby to my breast
her head in its
soft, filmy folds
set adrift among the debris
of police searches, overturned lives
tossed into a pile of orphaned clothes
and taken to a tag sale
where my friend,
recognizing it,
bought it
to keep me close
and wore it one day
to bring my daughter for a visit,
greeting me cheerfully,
“Remember this?”
and I laughed,
scooping up my baby
to carry her into the toy-filled playroom
where she rode me, her horsey
among the oversized stuffed animals
until visiting hours were over
when I stood at that great divide,
the visitor’s exit gate,
and watched my shirt and my child
leave
with my friend
from The New Yorker, February 24 & March 3,
1997, page 124
My Short Skirt by Eve Ensler (born 1953)
My short skirt
is not an invitation
a provocation
an indication
that I want it
or give it
or that I hook.
My short skirt
is not begging for it
it does not want you
to rip it off me
or pull it down.
My short skirt
is not a legal reason
for raping me
although it has been before
it will not hold up
in the new court.
My short skirt, believe it or
not
has nothing to do with you.
My short skirt
is about discovering
the power of my lower calves
about cool autumn air traveling
up my inner thighs
about allowing everything I see
or pass or feel to live inside.
My short skirt is not proof
that I am stupid
or undecided
or a malleable little girl.
My short skirt is my defiance
I will not let you make me afraid
My short skirt is not showing off
this is who I am
before you made me cover it
or tone it down.
Get used to it.
My short skirt is happiness
I can feel myself on the ground.
I am here. I am hot.
My short skirt is a liberation
flag in the women’s army
I declare these streets, any streets
my vagina’s country.
My short skirt
is turquoise water
with swimming colored fish
a summer festival
in the starry dark
a bird calling
a train arriving in a foreign town
my short skirt is a wild spin
a full breath
a tango dip
my short skirt is
initiation
appreciation
excitation.
But mainly my short skirt
and everything under it
is Mine.
Mine.
Mine.
(from The Vagina Monologues)
Emperor’s New Clothes
Little Red Riding Hood