for you think: it’s only a clothesline. but let’s
let its anonymity go, let’s admit there’s the line you see
and the line you don’t. let’s build
a profile: you’re a size 2 petite, your fibers natural,
your waistbands elastic, your underwear practical.
your colors run cool like beach glass, blues
and greens that whirl and eddy. but a long red
dress breaks my projected pattern, trips me
up like a loose step on the stairway.
your long red dress with your invisible head nodding to mythical music
while yoga pants dance and inexplicable scarves full of the stars
flap smoke signals from you to me, a lovely message from may,
a lingering spring translation. lovely holey cashmeres
and too-buttoned cardigans climb the line
like a stairway to december, not as constant as the stars,
but yet—that dress—
that long red dress with a blue refrain.
___
Elizabeth Vignali is currently working on a novel, a poetry collection, and is pursuing a BA in English at Western Washington University. Her poems have been published in Glass: A Journal of Poetry, the Sue C. Boynton Poetry Contest Winning Poems chapbook and Jeopardy magazine.
