Wendy Taylor Carlisle lives and works in the Arkansas Ozarks. She is the author of five chapbooks and four books, most recently The Mercy of Traffic, (Unlikely Books, 2019) and On the Way to the Promised Land Zoo, CyberwitFor more information, check her web site at www.wendytaylorcarlisle.com.
Closets, a Quatorzain
These closets hide clothes for every weather—
oilskins and sheer cotton, spandex, Polartec,
short skirts to wriggle out of, velvet robes to throw off,
long-ago furs with their malodorous politics,
tucked away in cedar. Here are summer dresses
like migrating butterflies, now in the South America
upstairs, but ready to flit down at
the first Spring balm.
Choose your cover. Do not be troubled
by winter’s stiff-backed satins, sober twill.
Let Chiffon have its own wardrobe.
Each fabric has a code, inclines a lover to settle
an errant palm there or there, rough to smooth
over that luscious fabric
you.
Menu
You’re a bonbon, a
lamb roast, a steamy
thick soup, glistening
with all the oils I
now know to be so
bad for my heart. I’m
garlic. Let me rub
up against you. I’m
cardamom. Let me
season you. I’m no-
thing nourishing. With
you, I’m the hunger
and the emptiness
that follows behind.