semperfiona | (no subject)

We're having a big desk relocation at work this week, so I've been packing up my accumulated stuff and getting rid of a lot of obsolete paper. Just now I moved the inbox, and found under it a scrap of yellow lined paper with my handwriting on both sides. Both are the same text, one with multiple edit marks and the other apparently a rewrite of the preferred version. There's no date, so I have no idea how old this is or when or why I would have written it. It might be a five-word-poem (see

poets_challenge), or the beginnings of one. The meter's badly off, there's no punctuation, and it's pretty clearly unfinished, but I post it anyway.

The shirt has no wrinkles
Its collar starched taut as her spine
She presses meaningless circles
And line after line
Cursing circumstance quietly
The widow just yesterday wife
Her face bleached as the lightning
That took her man's life
Makes her last consecration
Ironing his clothes for the wake
A ritual