Black Silk

By Tess Gallagher b. 1943 Tess Gallagher

She was cleaning—there is always

that to do—when she found,

at the top of the closet, his old

silk vest. She called me

to look at it, unrolling it carefully

like something live

might fall out. Then we spread it

on the kitchen table and smoothed

the wrinkles down, making our hands

heavy until its shape against Formica

came back and the little tips

that would have pointed to his pockets

lay flat. The buttons were all there.

I held my arms out and she

looped the wide armholes over

them. “That’s one thing I never

wanted to be,” she said, “a man.”

I went into the bathroom to see

how I looked in the sheen and

sadness. Wind chimes

off-key in the alcove. Then her

crying so I stood back in the sink-light

where the porcelain had been staring. Time

to go to her, I thought, with that

other mind, and stood still.

Tess Gallagher, "Black Silk" from Amplitude: New and Selected Poems. Copyright © 1987 by Tess Gallagher. Reprinted by permission of Graywolf Press. All rights reserved. www.graywolfpress.org

Source: Willingly (Graywolf Press, 1984)

Biography

Poet, essayist, and short story writer Tess Gallagher was born in 1943 in Port Angeles, Washington, to a logging family. Her early years were marked by the rhythms of seasonal work, as well as the landscape of both the Northwest and the Ozarks, where her grandparents lived. “I don’t know how many children really get to explore vast amounts of territory like that,” she has said in interviews. “It builds something in you.” . . .

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