Satin

The multi-colored satin hangers, in the waning hours
of an estate sale, failed to entice hungry crowds
who loudly pawed the furniture and tools of someone who
might never have invited them for coffee, or a swim
nearby. The lake community, perhaps, had mourned
for months before the relatives had finished with dividing
up the best, and all the rest was priced to sell.
The signs were many, promising a bigger treasure trove
than what was left when I arrived the second day. A weary
woman saw me looking in the closet.
Inquiring what the hangers would be going for,
she said a quarter each, no two, it's time we packed it in
(that last remained unspoken but I heard it from the lines
around her smile). And so I bought them, but not all.
A few I left behind so that the closet, missing a dead
woman whose name I'll never know,
and missing the weight of her clothes
and missing her lingering scent
will be, perhaps, there in the weeks to come,
or even longer in the present market,
forgotten when the house is finally sold.
They hang there patiently and wait in darkness
for some mother's loving hands
to hang Sunday dresses for some sweet little girl
remembering that long ago, their lady was one too.


(c) Ellen Gillette, 2017

Beautiful Lady

The prompt for my writer's group this
month (and I can't make it anyway)
was to complete the sentence:
"I am beautiful because..."

I am beautiful

because

my mother said it,

or my father,

or another man?

Is there an absolute

or are we talking relative?

Some natives know that

beauty means huge drooping earlobes

but at some address, it is golden tresses;

at still others, ebony. Straight teeth

or lots of curves, a certain weight

(which differs greatly in the world,

the target, Cinderella’s shoe of pounds or grams

abounds in ads and articles that tell the

mindless masses

what is beautiful this year.

A teen, I read a book whose

character said, “Every woman is

as beautiful as

some man thinks that she is.”

It made a big impression at the time.

And then I had to talk myself into

another truth to fit the circumstances,

so I didn’t think that it depended all

on me. A man who wants your love

will tell you anything.

A man who truly loves you

sees the beauty of so many things:

a smile, a sassiness, the eyes,

the way the hips sway back and forth,

and he is blinded to the faults

that (honestly) exist in many

forms and fashions.

I’m beautiful? You bet I am,

and any woman who knows love,

(but even more than that, she loves herself)

will say the same. The scars and sags

and imperfections only add more

interest to the eye of someone keen

on knowing everything about you

(which includes the woman at

the center of the conversation, too).

(c) Ellen Gillette, 2017

Grammatically, "We"

There is, at times, no poetry,

no words or paragraphs,
no songs to bring forth spinal chills or tears,
and no pontificating prose affixed to
pretty cardboard monuments
to this or that emotion.
And at such times, the feelings
fight, give way to facts,
hard truths that are self-evident
but which we're prone to cover up
with syrup, sex, or sentiment
which have their places, have their
name cards at the table nicely lettered
in calligraphy. We honor them.
But even then, there is a recognition
of the knowledge underneath it all,
fierce this-is-it that cannot be
removed or altered or embarrassed
by the faint and vain attempts
to make apologies, to blush,
to lie, to cover up, to dress it up in
clothes that don't embarrass, call
attention to the bumps and lumps of
our existence.
That is where I want to meet you,
in the honest glare of stark awareness
that there is an Us.

That there has always been,
and always will be, Us.

Whatever argument
you may present,
whatever pacifying poultice
you apply to wounds that only you
can feel, I reel, I swoon, I agonize,
I glory in the Us and nothing more.


(c) Ellen Gillette