Limper and meeker the cheap cottons grow thin.

Heavy with wearing things; nothing I want to be seen in.

 

I’d rather lean in the window

With my poppled milk-skin and say nakedness

 

Is our drab uniform. Don’t worry:

Nothing will approach, no one is looking. Only

 

A white dog like a flashlight across the night.

Father has allowed me to name

 

The clothes—as I learn to sew. But they

Are boneless. They’re not animals. I can’t support them.

 

New things: yes, I’ll sit in them for awhile,

A full skirt, ruffles, necklace, watch and rings,

 

And rub a gardener’s naked back. But when he sleeps

I strip alone, open

 

The curtains, flatten against the window

I give oil to, pull back

 

With its dust tracing my sunlessness.

Or I might hold myself like rag and ammonia

 

To the pane I make worthwhile,

Clarify. My silhouette is clearly tired,

 

I want to start from here and go on,

With this streaked and strapping,

 

Purple, pale, okra-blossom bone-clothing,

The body scribbled on by a carried child

 

And not for young satyrs to grade. I want

The worn clothes torn

 

To bare the thread,

To pattern what is raw-edged.

 

This is my body

Stitched for no one else,

 

With these patchworker’s bloodstains—every quilt

Wears its finger blood

 

From the needle, this

Is not failure, to be harmed this way,

 

Thimbles, bodices, all cast off.  Lights off, I rest

Here in a nakedness that has the power

 

To make our daughter

Love women.

 

Beside the curtain torn by a catclaw

Or chewed through by sun, I am more

 

Than a glass woman, more than a fabric one.

This skin. The bible-leaves of the labia.

 

The fever of my forehead. Its

Workmanship. Naming the quilt patterns.

 

Name clothes, Father says, be ashamed and name the clothes.

 

I name. Wimple, haik, yashmak. Panties, slip, bra.