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Sharon Cumberland

"My poems are both funny and spiritual--how's that for a combination?"

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I DREAMED OF MY MOTHER’S CLOTHES

By Sharon Cumberland

I dreamed of my mother’s clothes:
opened an antique wardrobe—all her
clothes were there that I remember,
from crinolines to hose

with elegant seams
up the back; her housecoat,
her scarves that float
in perfume; I seem

to stand before a bank
of fabric memory,
my mother with me—
casual or swank

in gown, blouse, and slack—
as I rummage through
saying “Oh! I remember you,
and you!”—the fecund rack

giving me my mother
back again, and me a child
in her warm closet, clothes piled
around me like other

arms, the camphor scent of caring.
I find a green remnant
of the tweed coat she sent
me away to college in—faring

alone—long before she left herself,
an old lady in tidy gym
clothes, eyes rheumy, brain dim,
leaving spangled shawls on a back shelf.

In the dream I clutch the fiber
body of her, the outermost skin—
embrace it all, remember when
the clothes, and I, were filled by her.

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Poems

LIPSTICK

I DREAMED OF MY MOTHER’S CLOTHES

MAN WHO WANTS YOU

MARRIAGE AT CANA

UNREASONABLE WOMAN

TWENTY YOUNG MEN

THE DAY NO ONE DIED

KYRIE PANTOKRATOR

MY HOUSEMATE BOWS A THOUSAND TIMES

BEFORE

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