At the Fashion Museum

The covenant we cast since
days of fig leaf & loincloth,
thrill of what’s under the zipper,
silk stripped against an ear of corn.
Enter this frozen farm of mannequins
with phantom antlers & rooster
combs. Gallery corrals where craft
is high, fruits hang low & bucketfuls 
of hue know how to color an empire.

Defying brittle sepia tones of
history with spinning jenny like
a noble dinosaur with its offspring—
wool frocks, cotton petticoats, 
gingham coy & lace demure, teasing
tulle, taffeta, cashmere, tooth of
hound, & buds of lavender pregnant
with the grammar of ornament.

Fashion, the great sartorial pollinator—
nipple windows, suits that speak
louder than words, hands swallowed
by sleeves, youthquake of ready-to-wear.
To reimagine pleats or gender binary,
orange as new pink, snow globes
of counter-culture couture.

Temple where we worship
the language of fabric & dismiss 
ghosts of expiration dates.

Buttonhole

The upholstery for our nakedness
knows all our bodies’ lies—
what’s draped, untucked, 
or buttoned up like kudzu.
We have been fasteners
for thousands of years,
our provenance for connection.

Peculiar norms thrive.
Gendered buttons still a thing—
right for men, left for women,
holes that push liberal
buttons. How to summon
each clotheshorse to press
the red button
on a global fashion
too fast & furious.

This buttonhole
we squeeze through—
a ravishing that ravages,
high crimes committed
in too-ready-to-wear,
tyranny of quarterly returns
embedded into bent-over shoulders
from Manchester to Rana Plaza.

What should we wear today?
Frog loops too loose
to button down white noise 
of sweatshop—lint & fibers
clinging to too many nose hairs.
Jacket pockets fill with
stones the size of baby 
potatoes, hoarse yawps limp 
across too many landscapes.

How to be a Maven

Color can raise the dead.
-Iris Apfel

Call yourself an accidental icon,
which is as far as a life of affluence 
can shed its fortuitous self. Make
sure your Barbie doll doppelgänger
misplaces all your wrinkles & your
black rims of flying saucer eyebobs 
avert weathered years. Museum &
Commerce with a capital C will come
calling to stroke the conspicuous layers
of exotic prerogatives which were
always just you. Mixing high & low,
you ain’t no badass fad, just a lifetime
of making your way towards a century
at the altar of freewheeling surprise.

RIKKI SANTER

Rikki Santer’s poetry has appeared in numerous publications including Ms. Magazine, Poetry East, The Journal of American Poetry, Hotel Amerika, Crab Orchard Review, Grimm, and Slipstream. She has received five Pushcart and three Ohioana book award nominations, as well as a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities. Her recent collection, Drop Jaw, inspired by the art of ventriloquism, was published by NightBallet Press. Her website is www.rikkisanter.com.