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What the Wire Hangers Say
by Kate Peper

March 14, 2022 Contributed By: Ann Calandro, Kate Peper

Mirror by Ann Calandro
Mirror by Ann Calandro

Over and over

our thin necks

hang the likeness 

of your unfilled 

body

 

We’ve known you for so long

We just want

to get closer

 

Call us flimsy    cheap

when you discard us 

in your 

seasonal raids  

toss us

back

to the dry cleaners

 

Yet open the closet door

     

there are even more of us

 

Those plastic or wooden 

others 

with their sturdy bones

can’t       keep       up 

 

Our slender shoulders     are    your shoulders

 

We grow tender 

just having you near

 

The weight of you 

is moth 

light

 


Besides writing, KATE PEPER loves to paint watercolors, garden obsessively and walk with her husband and semi-feral dog, Hannah, in Northern California. Her chapbook, Dipped In Black Water, won the New Women’s Voices Award from Finishing Line Press, 2016 and her poems can be found in The American Journal of Poetry, Baltimore Review, Cimarron Review, Potomac Review, Rattle, Tar River Review and others.

ANN CALANDRO is a writer, mixed media collage artist, and classical piano student. Her fiction, creative nonfiction, and poetry have been published in print and online literary journals and included in two print anthologies. Her artwork has been published in print and online journals, exhibited in galleries, and awarded prizes. See more artwork at www.anncalandro.webs.com.

Filed Under: Featured Content, Featured Poetry, Poetry Posted On: March 14, 2022

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