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Skirts and Slacks

By W. S. Di Piero b. 1945

The .32 Special,

its Dutch Masters box,

still in their bedroom

closet, days after

my mother’s death,

plus my father’s

thirty years ago.

I used to practice

disarming, reloading,

putting it in my mouth

for fun. And so,

here it is again,

but (stupid woman,

Great Depression child

scrolling tens and twenties

in macaroni boxes)

loaded, half-cocked.

Oh yes, shoot the burglar

in the closet, the cat

in heat on the fence,

and Calvin Coolidge. She rose,

rammy, close to death,

cocked up in bed

as if pulleyed by heaven,

sometime past midnight.

I was there to watch

her eyes wake for a moment

enraged and hateful toward me.

Bone wooled with slights

of flesh, what certainty

in the body at its end?

And between here and there?

Breath stops, blood fades,

the comic head I’m lifting

from the pillow feels

too merely anatomical

and heavier than before.

“Skirts and Slacks” from Skirts And Slacks: Poems © 2001, used by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc.

Source: Poetry (June 2012).

Biography

W.S. Di Piero was born in 1945 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and earned degrees from St. Joseph’s College and San Francisco State College. A poet, essayist, art critic, and translator, Di Piero has taught at institutions such as Northwestern University, Louisiana State University, and Stanford, where he is professor emeritus of English and on faculty in the prestigious Stegner Poetry Workshop. Elected to the American Academy of . . .

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