Threads
You get used to anything, even hanging, if you hang long enough.
— my great aunt Katherine
This grey-black’s the new neutral
among the fabrics of life’s clothing.
It makes for smart darts and sewing against the bias.
Make sure all your accessories match,
though clash can be your match
if you do enough of it. Turn heads,
avoid eye contact. Eyes are for buttons.
Everyone will think you look
dashing, are worth
snagging, or you’re too much to take in.
Don the attire, belt yourself, but don’t pull
a loose thread to wrinkle a sleeve,
just to see where it goes.
Melancholy is not enough.
Snap off what’s loose instead,
with your thumbnail against your finger.
A thread’s nothing to hang by.
You get used to anything, even hanging, if you hang long enough.
— my great aunt Katherine
This grey-black’s the new neutral
among the fabrics of life’s clothing.
It makes for smart darts and sewing against the bias.
Make sure all your accessories match,
though clash can be your match
if you do enough of it. Turn heads,
avoid eye contact. Eyes are for buttons.
Everyone will think you look
dashing, are worth
snagging, or you’re too much to take in.
Don the attire, belt yourself, but don’t pull
a loose thread to wrinkle a sleeve,
just to see where it goes.
Melancholy is not enough.
Snap off what’s loose instead,
with your thumbnail against your finger.
A thread’s nothing to hang by.
Anna Leahy's book Constituents of Matter won the Wick Poetry Prize, and her latest chapbook, Sharp Miracles, will appear from Blue Lyra Press in 2016. Her poems and essays appear in The Southern Review, The Rumpus, Crab Orchard Review, The Pinch, Gravel, Helen, Tinderbox Poetry Journal, Wordpeace, and more. She teaches in the MFA and BFA programs at Chapman University, where she edits the journal TAB and curates the Tabula Poetica reading series. She also co-writes Lofty Ambitions blog.