Shirt

The shirt without the convict
is so much more resilient.
It’s full of wind just now,
dancing on a clothesline

like a hanged man behind her back.
Then she will drop it on a pile
of other versions of him,
shirts with their arms snaked

around each other. What would God
make of this orgy of clothing on her floor?
Sodom & Gomorrah got tired.
There’s a sugar substitute in one pocket.

Here his kid has dressed a bare winter tree
in his father’s blue sweater.
He grew so angry at its resistance to clothing,
he broke one of its arms making it decent.