Shanna Compton

I wore my dress

to the anthracite museum
where in delicate bush-bean pink
all the chitchat was front-loaded

I wore my dress
I was somebody out larking
where in tufted crest titmouse gray
the minutes rolled by in wavelets

I wore my dress again
and again through the long garnet
fall where the beetles shone to each other
like glossed alphabets what grubbed under our speech

My dress wore me out
It made such demands of my saunter
through the strewn galactic mirrors where
I multiplied relentlessly against my best interest

My dress        my dress
o mess of shabbiness     o thread
bare habit        amorously wrecking
its own shadow

SHANNA COMPTON works as a freelance book designer in Lambertville, New Jersey. Her fourth poetry collection, Creature Sounds Fade (Black Lawrence Press), is forthcoming in 2020. She is also the author of Brink, For Girls & Other Poems, Down Spooky, and several chapbooks.