Her dress shows she has abstained

 

Her dress shows she has abstained
from productive employment.
For a pretense she has pockets.
She has ideas.
She won’t throw them out.
They exist and not just in her thoughts.
In her house her closet her box, drawer or chest, maybe in there.

 

It takes her more or less time each season to develop aesthetic nausea.
She reserves days, lines them up, like people she hates.
She has this saxophone idea playing and plying
near the end of her song-life.

 

She can carry water with bare hands.

 
 
 

Valerie Fox’s work has appeared in numerous journals including Juked, Painted Bride Quarterly, Sentence, West Branch, Apiary, and Ping Pong. Her books include The Glass Book (Texture Press) and The Rorschach Factory (Straw Gate Books). She also published the book of poems, Bundles of Letters Including A, V and Epsilon, which is a compilation written with Arlene Ang (Texture Press). Much interested in collaboration, she is recently part of a group of Philadelphia artists combining dance, word, and visual arts in projects known as “Variable Space.”