What the Girl Wore

Kathleen Driskell Click to read more...

driskellKathleen Driskell’s most recent book of poems Seed Across Snow (Red Hen, 2009) was listed as a national best seller by the Poetry Foundation.  Her poems have most recently appeared in Rattle, River Styx and Pembroke Magazine.  She is Professor of Creative Writing at Spalding University in Louisville, KY, where she helps direct the low-residency MFA in Writing program.

 

At the store, on the hanger, the blue dress must have fallen
like water to a froth of frilled hem, its bodice as smocked
as a christening gown. A season out of date, her mother chose it
from our local department store chiefly for the high collar,
but I knew it was a dress Lisa wouldn’t have been caught
dead in. Just hidden under the neckband of lace, the circle
of her purple necklace, each dark bead a fingertip of efficient
bruise that we already knew about anyway, and simply went on
imagining, as we, her classmates, filed past the white coffin.

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