August 2020
Clela Reed
clelareed@gmail.com
Bio Note: For two years recently, I was quite obsessed with silk--its production, history, uses, and associations with many famous and not-so-famous people. I researched, I marvelled, I wrote. What resulted was a chapbook which went on to win a publication prize from Evening Street Press and then the title of Georgia Author of the Year 2020 in chapbook competition. I've published seven collections of poems, but Silk has certainly been the most rewarding in so many ways.

Silk

Say the word. Savor the sibilance 
as the tongue approaches the teeth, 
but withdraws coyly to the palate 
to spool out the luxuriant fullness, 
ending with the soft kuh. 

Silk. Say it again and again, 
and yards of shimmering fabric, 
undulations of light,
rivers of color in shades of jewels
slip over your shoulders, 
cling lightly to breasts 
and skim the belly and hips,
to pool at your feet. 

Silk. Say it again 
and come to comprehend
the scandal, Plutarch dissuading 
“the virtuous and prudent wife” 
from wearing its near transparence, 
the Senate’s edicts 
to prohibit such sensuality.

Say it quietly, silk. 
Fabric of secrecy for centuries,
worn finally by Roman women
who dared to hide nothing.
Originally published in Silk, Evening Street Press, 2019

Isadora's Scarves

“Affectations can be dangerous.” Gertrude Stein
upon hearing of the death of Isadora Duncan 

She refused the cape she was offered,
though September in Nice could chill
the throat as quickly as champagne. 
The convertible ride was theater;
her image the thing she prized
and so the scarf—long, silk, some say blue
—wound about her neck once, twice 
and tossed behind her to flirt with the wind. 

Her signature. Her costume and prop
to veil her naked body as she danced 
to Chopin’s waltzes, to move 
like music through the leaps and turns 
of the heat of Brahms’ German mode, 
to flow behind her like the wake of a revolution 
when she honored France’s “Marseillaise,”
her long, silk scarves were undulations
of sensuality, flags of the scandalous triumph
audiences came to see. 

But who could have guessed the strength,
the worm-wrought, loom-welded strength? 
Who could have imagined how airy silk
snatched by spokes could ratchet the body free,
torque the neck, and slap the skull 
to the pavement, eyes wide in amazement?
Originally published in Silk, Evening Street Press, 2019
©2020 Clela Reed
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