When Women Waken – Chris Murray

Crinoline

The grief synesthete bears her horsehair dress heavy
as the rose haw throbs its orange glow,

through forest or stream, each time a visit to the griefscape is necessitated, (and it will be)
dress gathers a little more.

Contracting centimetre slow, She
begins to weight her
brocades as web-work / a tatter of lace /
a smear of pollen (gold)
and, yes,

sequined embonpoint (tears too, always).

That throbbing orange (big as a head) is a flower that will not sit in its Bed.
her train drags past, load-bearing its leaf and moss/ its loamy grain/ its fray/

its thread(ing).

The only response is wonder,
the only way is still

and still –

Crinoline is © C. Murray

Crinoline was first published at When Women Waken, Fall 2013, from a forthcoming book called She.

sans

it is all ceremony
it is all the cloths
all gathered-in

it is white tailor’s chalk
in a neat triangle
it is the blanket-stitch
before the machine

it is the neighbour woman
with her bone-pick
pulling stitches
one by one
from the curtain lining

the [bone-pick] is ivory coloured
a little larger than a [tooth-pick]
nubbed to cradle under the silks

and lift them up
so she can snip it at the ties
II.

the little knot hidden in back of the material stretched out across her knees is silver, the thread is doubled-to

the material is some floral-stuff on white laid onto a cream skirting
she will rinse it out in cold water later

and hang it on the monday line the blue-blue rope of the monday line
the length of material

is clean, sweaty from her handiwork
she will hang it over the gauze of her nets which are always immaculate

sans

Published Winter 2013 at The Southword Journal . The poem is from The Blind, published Oneiros Books 2013

Chris Murray

Tag: When Women Waken

‘Crinoline’ and ‘sans’ by C. Murray

Crinoline

sans