On Earthly Wardrobe

Mystery nudes, with 

pick and shovel, in the heaven mine. 

Hack clothes from stone, for cotton ore. 

Not a stitch on them 

that can't say "thread". 

A ragged hole in the afterlife

supported by seams--

tiny as a dresser drawer. Its insides

pocked with closets. Nudes

at work, under light

of their own skin. 

Main characters in Renaissance paintings,

the whole kibosh of Greek gods,

porn plums straight from video…

An old man stands quietly in his fat,

a girl changes before her

very eyes in a mirror…

hydra-headed fantasies 

of the teenage brain

                    then

a body slumped alone in a shower

             then

crowds of condemned Jews

along with every shade of healthy slave…

All working thirty hours a day

down to invisible night

to make this a well-hidden

and discrete dressing room. 


And so we bear their lost sizes

on our very bodies.