Next Line, Please: "For Years You've Kept Me Hanging" [by Virginia Valenzuela]

When Lionel Trilling was 23 years old, he wrote to a friend, “There are two ways, I have discovered, of wearing despair. One is over all your clothes, a great vestment hanging well over your shoes and liable to trip you; the other is to tie it about your middle like a Cordelier’s rope—only under your pants—to make you keep your belly in.” Now, thinking back to our prompt in which NLP contributors were asked to write something from the point of view of a piece of clothing, how might this idea of wearing emotions turn into poetry.

One of the routes to take this prompt came about from a René Magritte painting in last week's post, and Patricia Wallace took it all the way with this prize-winning entry:

“We must think about objects at the very moment when all their meaning is abandoning them” (Magritte)

Closeted, floating on a wire wingspan
all unbuttoned, I no longer conceal
anything, not even the shadowed silk

of my lining. The very moment memory
evaporates like the scent of lavender
warding off moths, I become an angel

released from the earthly weight of meaning,
my fluttering empty sleeves rising and falling,
their gesture-less syllables unintelligible,

my folds collapsing the space where a mantled heart
once hid. The old, stale secrets—
ticket stubs, wrappers, crumpled notes now illegible—

spill from my pockets, light as the drift of leaves

Christine Rhein shares top honors with “Sequin Dress,”

I’m so blue, even in the dark, stuck
in the back of your closet, your mind.
For years you’ve kept me hanging,
layers of dust graying my shimmer
and the sparkling way we once danced
in that dressing room, how you smiled
driving me home, how you worried
I could wrinkle. What are you doing
out there, wearing a T-shirt, jeans?
Are you waiting to find the perfect
stilettos before you think of slipping
me on? Or is it some stage you await,
spotlights on me, you—in your next
life—when you’ll sing Night and Day.

A third award went to Angela Ball's “Talking Couture Pantoum” for taking up on the challenge of informing the NLP public about the “New Look” in women’s fashion in the late 1940s, another suggestion of where to take the prompt.

I’m Rita Hayworth’s black evening gown in Gilda
My straplessness anticipates Christian Dior—his New Look, 1947,
My opera gloves pay homage to Gypsy Rose Lee.
My swirl of fabric at the hip is magic.

My straplessness anticipates Christian Dior.
Rita wore me to the hilt, singing, swiveling her shoulders.
My swirl of fabric at the hip is magic.
I’m Rita Hayworth’s evening gown in Gilda.

And finally, Eric Fretz wins the parody award for this clever rewriting of William Carlos Williams’s signature poem:

so much depends
upon

me, red wove
tie

silk with matte
weft,

astride the white
shirt

Visit the American Scholar's page to read the full post! With more arresting lines and wonderful "pieces." And tune in next Tuesday for a new prompt.

Comments

[maria]

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