Poetryfashion.com

              Fall/Winter Collection 2007

By Wilmer Mills

I.
We need no further proof that “Poetry,”
The word, is meaningless when, through the mail,
It sells an adjectival quality,
A style, a mode of clothing now on sale.

These fashion models preen for us to see
The latest looks in poses that project
That “deep mystique” and how “poetically”
And perfectly their hidden bones connect.

Each section of the catalog was shot
In different picturesque and quaint locales:
A dock, a Swiss chalet, a garden plot.
Even a farm looks good around the gals.

Its country charm is something they can wear;
Beside a harnessed mare, the models flit
And simper, “feeling their oats,” but unaware
They, not the horse, are “chomping at the bit.”

No doubt, they’re also unaware of how
The natural world informed a metaphor.
We speak of things and don’t remember now,
In our unbridled times, that, long before

We left the farm for cities made of glass,
Our forebears thought of ways to get at truth
By naming This for That: “A horse’s ass
Of another color that’s getting long in the tooth.”

What does it mean that what a symbol meant
Is something worn today instead of said?
What does it say, by pixel and cement,
That all our natural metaphors are dead?

Has Poetry itself become a trope,
A trite expression few can understand,
Except for how the word evokes a hope
Of something beautiful and made by hand?

II.
One model poses with an open book,
The title is In Alle Ewigkeit,
A prop that isn’t worth a second look…
Or is there something hidden, recondite?

Printed beside the photos one can see
Descriptions of each fabric and design,
And read the footprints where, vestigially,
Some words have fallen metrically in line:

“An easy pair of trousers in a silk…”
“The look is elegant…” “The full-length sleeves
Have bonded, button cuffs…” “a weekend look…”
“A jacket with a modern, laid-back ease…”

Perhaps the models aren’t commercial whores
That un-write paper into “pay-per-view”
And skinny dip in the pool of metaphors.
Sing to me, Muses. Sing of Old and New

In cadences that fell and rose in clay
When written words began their marathon,
When man engraved a pattern by the way
His bull turned furrows, called Boustrophodon.

Verse is a groove that’s helped us grow our thoughts.
Millenniums of syllables and feet
Have cultivated our most prudent oughts
And foolish naughts as food that’s fit to eat.

The skills and discipline of lines may die,
But utter any word; say “dirt” or “water,”
And hear why Helen Keller learned to cry
Though she was deaf and didn’t know what taught her,

A misty consciousness of something lost,
Returning thought, as if by memory
She didn’t have, a chantey we can’t exhaust
No matter what we do with poetry.