Emily Fragos: Pick of the Week [ed. Terence Winch]

Emily Fragos

 

 

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The Sadness of Clothes

 

When someone dies, the clothes are so sad. They have outlived

their usefulness and cannot get warm and full.

You talk to the clothes and explain that he is not coming back

 

as when he showed up immaculately dressed in slacks and plaid jacket

and had that beautiful smile on and you’d talk.

You’d go to get something and come back and he’d be gone.

 

You explain death to the clothes like that dream.

You tell them how much you miss the spouse

and how much you miss the pet with its little winter sweater.

 

You tell the worn raincoat that if you talk about it,

you will finally let grief out. The ancients forged the words

for battle and victory onto their shields and then they went out

 

and fought to the last breath. Words have that kind of power

you remind the clothes that remain in the drawer, arms stubbornly

folded across the chest, or slung across the backs of chairs,

 

or hanging inside the dark closet. Do with us what you will,

they faintly sigh, as you close the door on them.

He is gone and no one can tell us where.

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Emily Fragos is the recipient of the Guggenheim Fellowship in Poetry, the Witter Bynner Poetry Prize  from the Library of Congress, and the Literature Award from the American Academy of Arts & Letters. She is the author of four acclaimed books of poetry, Unrest, Saint Torch, Hostage, and Little Savage, and the editor of seven poetry anthologies for The Everyman’s Pocket Library: Music’s Spell, Art & Artists, The Great Cat, The Dance, The Letters of Emily Dickinson, Poems of Gratitude, and Poems of Paris. She has also written numerous articles on music and dance, and served as guest poetry editor for Guernica. Emily Fragos has taught at Columbia, Yale, and NYU. She lives in New York City.

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Király Nikoletta  1978. Hungarian Painter.                                                      Király Nikoletta, 1978. Hungarian Painter.

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Author: Terence Winch