To Stitch the Myrtle World, that Crepe

by Marjorie Becker

 

Say burgundy, mauve, off-purple range
estranged, the pink remorse that timed
the cloth store I created there
its wild forlorn, the need for open

flavor, open color, utter dawn . . . .
we walked that realm in spring-to
summer heat because the crepe,
oh yes the myrtle world of crepe

reminded us how to dress
the voice, we sang, we started out
undaunted simply sewing sudden
silk, an orchestra so keen, a

breeze reprieving underthings, a netherworld
of garments filled with circus light
We are, Shareena said, in tremolo,
a curtain call, a need for hot and

winsome frolic, bring it on, this Macon
night where sisters sing the inner
untold inklings still relevant.
rapturous in the store we celebrate,

we conjugate, we bring it on again again
as only ripest burgundy or sudden shock
or simple peach reminds us all
so clearly that the place where Clara-Just-Comeover

teaches total untold tenderness
and always wears—we won’t despair—
an elegance of dream.

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A Macon, Georgia native, MARJORIE BECKER holds a Yale doctorate in Latin American History and is Associate Professor in History and English at USC. She is the author of the prize-winning Setting the Virgin on Fire (California, 1996), the poetry collections Body Bach (2005) and Piano Glass/Glass Piano (2010.)  She has received an array of awards including a Faculty Fulbright Research Fellowship for Mexico and awards from the AAUW, the NEH, and the ACLS. Her poems have been published in many journals and anthologies including Pratik, Peacock Journal, Crossroads Poetry Journal, Spillway, Pink Panther Magazine, Angle of Reflection, Beyond the Lyric Moment, Askew, Levure Litteraire, Ginosko Literary Journal, Desde Hong Kong: Poets in Conversation with Octavio Paz, and the Southern Poetry Anthology (Vol. V: Georgia.) She has recently completed a new poetry manuscript entitled The Macon Sex School.