Friday Love Poem: Amy David!

I fell in love with this poem when I heard it on IndieFeed Performance Poetry. Thanks, Amy!


Said the Skirt to the Bulge Beneath It:

You never felt uglier than in corduroy,
the twisting fibers, the olive green,
the heavyweight denial of your shape.
The first time you felt it screeching
below your fingers you vowed never
to let it come between your knees.
You sacrificed their angles to a mosaic
of scabs as you learned how the blades
don’t bend. Your mother offered no advice
and no clean tissues. Nobody told you
about the communion of static or how to find
the front of a thong.  You learned on your
own the secret of black patent leather heels:
not that they reflect up, as Sister Mary
warned, but the way they can be coupled
with anything. The corner boutique divides
its array by color, by size, by curvature
and Christian names. You are not wrong
to resist this sweaty cluster of labels.
The skirt is an awkward ally, blotting your envy
of what is created exactly to pattern.
You are not a hasty alteration. Every boy
you see in the club contains a wrinkled
novel, a bottomless opera, a long-expired
feast. One of them loves the taste
of mascara. Another will only undress
beneath a sticky lightbulb.  You watch
them at closing, buying and selling
their jars of footnotes and wishing you could
hang yours on the clothesline to kick
out the stool from below. But nothing calls
you like a zipper or holds you like a hem.
Nothing cuts you like an ironed pleat.
What you would not give to be a window.
You will rupture with fashion, you will linger
in the slip. You will let nothing deny
the intimacy of your thighs. Let their crossing
be a true horizon, every lover willing
to sail on, every lover trusting
last of all his eyes.

Amy David is a poet, performer, and Ph.D student from Evanston, IL.  She has competed at the National Poetry Slam three times as a member of the Chicago - Green Mill team and was an instigator of the first-ever disqualification from group piece finals.  Her work has appeared most recently in WordRiot, Shit Creek Review, The November 3rd Club, APICS Magazine, and the Chicago Redeye’s 5 on 5.