hung on a door or laid out tragically on a bed,
near an exercycle or a half-drunk cup of tea.
She shows me the wedding gowns – the deleted
faces, the arms spread like hostage victims,
buy now $80. Not that she wants one. She’s
after something in a floral, with bodice,
pleats, buttons of mother-of-pearl.
Each time she bids, it is an act of liberation:
wresting the dress from the cheap duvet,
from the hands of the woman who’s ballooned,
from the disenchanted wife. The packets arrive
in the arms of the courier man who whistles
the Marseillaise, and stays a moment too long
on the doorstep. She can’t wait to rip
them open, watch the dresses tumble out,
a garden right there on the table, but no
whiff of rose or lavender, the scent
is old duvet. Straight away,
she feels the seams, tugs and tugs the buttons,
washes by hand with Sunlight Soap, drapes them
in the garden in the sunshine to breathe. At dusk,
they come inside to the bedroom to join the others.
They have a lot to talk about.
Mary McCallum
Do pop to the Tuesday Poem hub for a fantastic video of poet Rives and his poem 'Rives controls the internet' selected by Sarah Jane Barnett. And a host of other wonderful Tuesday Poems in the sidebar.
