Blue Dress on a Hanger
It started with a picture of a girl
found in a book
not sure when
but you see her now:
plain as the sky
washed in common sense
Miss America for a day
a girl who writes songs
wears her hair
in waves and nutmeg
brims ripe with ingenuity
tolerates some degree of coincidence:
a mother of nature
with no children of her own:
teeth gritted
face powdered
her shine all delicate
and fragile.
It ends in blue fabric
casting a shadow-in-dance
against a closed door
as it wafts
on a hanger
in the lamplight of an evening almost passed.
Joey Brown’s poetry, fiction, and essays have appeared in a number of literary journals including Rhino, The Mid-America Poetry Review, The Dos Passos Review, Compass Rose, Pinyon, Clare, The Chaffin Journal, Quiddity, Front Range Review, storySouth, Freshwater, and The Florida Review. Her work has been nominated for The Pushcart Prize three times. In 2010, Mongrel Empire press published a collection of her poems titled Oklahomaography.
Joey holds an MA in Creative Writing and a PhD in Interdisciplinary Studies from the University of Oklahoma. She is a writing professor and teaches writing workshops.