qarrtsiluni

Discovered a concrete way to buy clothes?
A way to wear an abstraction—

A way to paint beneath the skin—
But cotton inoculates us

against this attempt,
100%, crisscrossed, & mercerized

horizon to prophylactic horizon.
Across each tight stitch, each

carbonated step
presses its sheet & fancies

a speck of latent illustration.
Bowing to the appeal of pleats,

the frayed & loose pattern
soft petals off of its graph,

an occasional pocket
holding a spring

sets its self off.

by Jenna Cardinale and Bruce Covey

Process notes

We decided to write a series of poems in which collaborative shifts occurred in cross-current from the poem’s couplet structure. One of us began with a single line; the other completed the couplet then began a new couplet. In each case the titles came last.