I love this shirt Why
do I love this shirt And why
are the sleeves so long
It’s silk the color of koala fur
I am trying it on
the cuffs drop
below my finger tips
the hem
to my knees
The shop owner calls it
the Daddy’s shirt says she’s sold
two hundred of them and
remember the cardboards
the cleaners used to put
inside the collar
and between the folds
This shirt
comes with those too
On my parents’
dove colored bedspread
penciling hearts on cardboards
from my father’s
pressed and folded shirts
Far from the expected losses
disillusionments
Secure in belonging
Easefully at home
Susan Kolodny's poems appear in New England Review, New York Quarterly, Raven's Perch and in many other journals and several anthologies. She's the author of two collections, Preserve (Finishing Line Press, 2017) and After the Firestorm (Mayapple Press, 2011), and of the prose nonfiction book, The Captive Muse: On Creativity and Its Inhibition (PsychoSocial Press, 2000). Kolodny lives and writes in Oakland, CA.