After A Fashion
by Coleen Shin

The rose arch, the arch rose. The unfathomable march
of fashion and fascism. Who wins will never matter
to women in commiseration. Twice won, war spoiled,
in asian robes, in spanish lace and belgium hair-nets.

A victory means little far away. A loss, everything
when virtue is traded for food, for haddock and salt-
when dust is the condiment that accompanies the feast.
It's as if these fabrics might burst and the cross soon burn.

I am a woman who has traded a soul for soul's ease,
a mud brick for a palace, a palace for a peach. Christ
for a soldier to mock his rise and fall, himself a prostitute
to better fed whores. Mirrored, I did not recognize her,

painted white as a child's bones. A mask that keeps
my flesh from flame, his eyes from the confessions of
my outspoken skin, a scalded mauve, its humors telling.
I would spare my cheeks the scars and tears, my sons

the names of their fathers, my daughter, her mother's
hat-boxes, her books of unread poems. I will never write
her name on any page, will give her to dirty peasants
save her from warriors and war, its unspeakable passions.