Coralie Reed

28 Fashion Shows

1.
A description of this garment serves no purpose.

2.
Let us proceed as we hum quietly to ourselves.

3.
Shield your eyes from the god-awfuller verisimilitudinous.

4.
(Remember, crumb catchers: bad.)

5.
(Was that nature?)

6.
Unauthorized hair formats and random acts of soy.

7.
Fresh detailing over newer, more acceptable forms of self-absorbency.

8.
Ancillary attainments, fiber-firm in the age of abstracture.

9.
(Just as with sneeze-guard, results may vary.)

10.
“Stratigraphic layering, interstitial and lacunary process, tectonic slippage.”

11.
Forced tooth decay in all the pretties.

12.
Marzipan knickerbockers impervious to trend.

13.
The want of a failed transgression covers a multitude of sins.

14.
“Whereof we cannot speak, thereof we must be silent.”

15.
Ash, sweet peas.

16.
Decals abundant in squirrel.

17.
Wilted gerber daisies attesting distinction.

18.
Bustiers carved from blocks of ice, which, in the process of melting, stained white frocking with streaks of blue-magenta.

19.
(A woman just isn’t a woman without her Maidenform thaw.)

20.
The flotsam phrase always best omitted.

21.
“On the willow tree in the midst of Babylon, we hung our harps.”

22.
Take that, antimatter!

23.
Swashbuckling suffragettes, hardbodied hausfrau geishas.

24.
(Promenade, counterpromenade)

25.
“He who utters the word fashion knows not what he says.”

26.
Holy colloidal diadems!

27.
(Say it isn’t so . . .)

28.
Hmmm . . .


 

Coralie Reed is a freelance writer living in North Carolina. Recent work has appeared in Denver Quarterly, Seneca Review, Sonora Review, Salt Hill, The Greensboro Review, and Fourteen Hills. Other poems from the "Fashion Shows" sequence are currently in Colorado Review and Slope #22.