Clothes Poems for Magma 56



Magma want your clothes (poems...)

"In the introduction to her anthology of clothes poems Out of Fashion (Faber, 2004), Carol Ann Duffy wrote ’[these poems] examine, in their different ways, how we dress or undress, how we cover up or reveal, and how clothes, fashion and jewellery are both a necessary and luxurious, a practical and sensual, a liberating and repressing part of our lives. I hope that the anthology forms an entertaining dialogue between the two arts of poetry and fashion’.This push and pull between cover up and revelation, necessity and luxury is what we’d like to see in your clothes poems for Magma 56, whether you’re writing about dress uniforms or haute couture, morning suits or suits of armour. Tell us about your little black dresses and your lucky pants, your wedding dresses and your weeding gloves and we’ll send the best of your poems down the catwalk of Magma 56.

 The deadline is 28 February 2013. 


This is one of my favorite clothes poems at the moment, found at Poets.org


What do women want 



 
by Kim Addonizio
I want a red dress. 
I want it flimsy and cheap, 
I want it too tight, I want to wear it 
until someone tears it off me. 
I want it sleeveless and backless, 
this dress, so no one has to guess 
what's underneath. I want to walk down
the street past Thrifty's and the hardware store 
with all those keys glittering in the window, 
past Mr. and Mrs. Wong selling day-old 
donuts in their café, past the Guerra brothers 
slinging pigs from the truck and onto the dolly, 
hoisting the slick snouts over their shoulders. 
I want to walk like I'm the only 
woman on earth and I can have my pick. 
I want that red dress bad.
I want it to confirm 
your worst fears about me, 
to show you how little I care about you 
or anything except what 
I want. When I find it, I'll pull that garment 
from its hanger like I'm choosing a body 
to carry me into this world, through 
the birth-cries and the love-cries too, 
and I'll wear it like bones, like skin, 
it'll be the goddamned 
dress they bury me in.

Comments

The Poetry Bus said…
I'm going to write a poem about underpants.
Words A Day said…
Maybe it will be the start of something Peadar - there's so much poetry in underpants - a whole sequence, a book, a series of books... a play, a monologue, a theatrical feast :)
Old Kitty said…
Now that's a poem about a dress!! Thank you! take care
x
Louise said…
I wrote a poem about my favourite dress once ... it was published in Envoi, I think. It was a terza rima as I recall and pretty good ... sadly I haven't written any poems for years now :( Must get back into it :)

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