Clothes Closet
By Nancy Pulley
Here, I brush against
my discarded costumes:
bell bottom pants swirling
at a bar in downtown Indianapolis
tangled in protests and rebellion,
young love and the kind of hurt
the heart will only let you feel once.
Overalls that were rough and real
on a Farmall tractor, lunging over stones
in a Southern Indiana field.
That leather jacket
and go-to-hell sock hat
that screamed John Paul Sartre.
Button down the side Dr. Kildare blouse
worn by a girl who could give her heart
to some dream man in a minute.
Green army jacket, drab attire
for anti-war rallies, a uniform of sorts
when we all wanted to be the same
in our differences.
Just clothes, my spring skins, sloughed off
and me arranging them, stroking each
with an old hand, remembering.
Nancy Pulley’s Bio
Nancy Pulley is a graduate of the University of Indianapolis. Her poems have appeared in The Flying Island, Arts Indiana Literary Supplement, Passages North, Plainsong, The Sycamore Review, Humpback Barn Collection, A Linen Weave of Themes, and The Tipton Poetry Journal. She received a 2013 Indiana Arts Commission Individual Artist Grant in Poetry. Nancy has published two chapbooks and Warren Avenue, a full length poetry book, published by Chatterhouse Press in 2014.