ode to my black suite pants.

for my mother.

 

 

 

It's that time again.

Time to pull you out

from your undue nicety

or fastidiousness.

 

A funeral is imminent.

 

It's OK

if you don't fit.

There are remedies

for the ills of the overwrought.

 

The crease I made

with the iron hiss, gone now,

curled up like the

arms of a dead father.

 

The stain(s) of excitement,

those of 98; the one that must be

considered as more

spiritual charge

 

than the coo of unrestrained relief. Yes.

The absorbing of shark-skin energy,

the platitudes of darkness

dilated with blood;

the epicure that fans out over

all discriminating good

 

like the sun on the side of a locomotive.

That I kept you when all else,

your kind, I banished to the

Salvation Army,

 

where old women, drunk on desire,

would split you open

and fondle your

crotch/

Reviews

[emmajoy]

' The crease I made ~ with the iron hiss, gone now, ~ curled up like the ~ arms of a dead father.'

You're one of the few who can - with quite a few phrases, create a tome. You use words like lovers' sighs or weapons of war, creating a feeling so strong or a picture so graphic that the reader feels every letter, every comma. There are grey, grey shadows in this, yet somehow they're starkly beautiful

[Cory Barrett]

I have red about 10 of you poems in the last 30 minutes. I am completely inundated with emotion... of all type. Your writing is moving and in the blind sided of way. It is great. Thank you for sharing.

As I finished the last stanza I found myself with my hand on on top of my head, and saying out loud "oh no she didn't!". Happily you did.

[Roger Turgeon]

I think we all seek the comfort of the familiar when faced with a situation that tests our emotions. It left me "panting"

[Ken Simm.]

A life through your pants. What a title for a book. This is exqusite and I understand exactly why you kept them, Dana.

[Horizon K.]

If I had only one suit that I wore to every funeral, I wonder what memories, scents, stains, would be stored within those threads... A suit you never want to wear, but can never throw away... Perhaps this is the suit to be buried in when your own sun sets, like it would travel well, after the footsteps of a father and a mother who went before... Anyway, you're a treasure Dana, every piece I read of yours has so much more, than what is just written on the surface... I love the ending too...

[Corset]

What more can I say that Kortas hasn't said already and better than I could? The thought of you pulling out your pants for your mother, for that last semblance of normalcy that you hang onto for such occasions the one where your mother has expectations of a son, who was actually a daughter in disguise, like armor, so so she could rest easy, like morphine so she can pretend even in sleep, that you were were the sum of her expectations, even after death, she would never really know you...beautiful as you are.

[W.k.kortas]

What I love about this piece (and the general run of your work) is how deceptively simple it is; on the face of it, writing an ode to a pair of pants is a simple--hell, simplistic raised to the power of simpletons--but they are a constant in a world which weaves magically between the dead (the funeral, the crease "curled up like the/arms of a dead father") and the living (the "stain(s) of excitement", the wonderful image of the final stanza.) There is all the stuff of life and death here, and it's achieved without ornate language or style tricks, no bric-a-brac hanging on so the author can show you how smart he is. It's tightly built, and it's the truth, and that is one hell of a combination.