Aunt Lizzy

Aunt Lizzy.
A big lady in all black and a witch’s hat.
Netta cleared your house out when you died.
Kept all of your Victoriana just in case
I happened to be born a decade later.
Catalogues. You don’t airbrush drawings.
Eighteen ninety and nineteen twenty three.
The fashionable lady. Nigger brown. Dapper.
Flapper. Marcel Waves. Aunt Lizzy, your
grave is mothballed, decoupaged, dignified,
maiden named and next to your parents.
I inherited so much more from you than
catalogues. Those stale, gathered petticoats.
Outdated,
Aunt Lizzy, Even for your time.
Netta said you wore a corset all your life.
Unlaced, up-straight, re-aligned,
for fear of undoing your delicate spine.
Archaic,
Aunt Lizzy. Even for your time.
Catalogues. The long umbrella. Curlers. Garters.
Greta Garbo. Pheasant feathers. Russian leather.
I kept them all, filled out yellow order forms
for dresses and gloves out of stock by a long shot.
I trade my jeans in for crinoline, sepia tones,
a snuff box for my iphone, tweed for t-shirts.
I encase myself in whalebone.
Old fashioned,
heavy as solitude, even for your time.
In a few years Netta will clear out my house,
and it won’t be my remains she’ll find.