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Board Administrator Username: mjm Post Number: 3702 Registered: 11-1998 |
Honorable Mention Dance of the White Shirts Jim Doss Like a team of exhausted wrestlers, this pile of white shirts flops on the living room floor, each too tired to raise an arm to apply another bear hug or half-nelson, unable to do anything but lie limp as jellyfish washed up on a beach. Any minute I expect one of them to sit up and fill their lungs with breath, puffing into a flag in the wind, or see the heart begin to pump beneath the left-hand pocket with the steady rhythm of a metronome as the wrists snap the cuffs into place. Then you come with the ancient wooden ironing board, creaking like a barn door as it opens. You come with the iron and its bellyful of steam, a drill sergeant ready to hiss orders to shape up this gang of misfit recruits. Sprinkles of water flicked from your fingers and a spray can of starch smooth out the nests of rumples and blemishes that fan out like cracks in glass, as one by one the shirts rise onto black wire hangers hooked over the doorframe. There they begin to take on my shape, my identity, turning into a row of eager suitors bidding for your attention, and when the breeze comes through, when the warm wind billows the curtains, they sway to the tango of your life moving their hips like fiery Latin lovers. |
