Clothes Heaped
Look at this strange pattern, a body in the rumples when, in truth
the real body lies beside.Crime scene? Chalk outline there in that cloth,
the bent-under legs, the inverted sleeves? Trace the clues, a trail to scent:
socks here, soft mushroom nubs glowing in the dark…
Room after room…here’s your sweater, the spread-eagle goose,
& shoes of an invisible giant’s stride straddling t-shirts, briefs, orgiastic.
Were you stumbling again or struck down this time?
I could sniff for truth, rummage pockets, the turned-over furniture.
I could tip your chin back for a mouth-to-mouth, but what is the use?
Lawn leaks through our screens, freshly-clipped, a scent on night winds
for moths batting lamplights & I, as distracted, intractable
to your comet-blaze these clothes are the tail of,
I turn translucent, the wings of a locust & run, fly with my bundle
to the laundering lies of the washing machine.
© Stephen Mead
Resident artist/curator for The Chroma Museum, Stephen Mead has intermittently been submitting work for publication going on four decades. He remains grateful to all of the editors who have given his work a good home as now, retired from his day job, he is busy trying to sell his 40-year backlog of art, Art Collection from Stephen Mead.
The Loch Raven Review 