Skirt or Skirts?
I am — honestly — in the last stages of the novel revision, and one of the picky things I worried over today was “skirts or skirt,” as in:
With a flounce of her red skirt (skirts?) beneath her cloak that suggested the young woman she would become in a few short years…
My friend Priscilla says this isn’t linguistic — did the Puritans wear skirts (multiple) like Victorians, or just one skirt? Look at pictures, she told me. I finally decided on skirt. I worked about 6 hours today, not all of it on this decision, I promise you — a record for broken-ankle me. I cleaned up 102 pages!
Meanwhile, the prompt for Day 7, over at POETRYisEVERYTHING has to do with Port Townsend and Art Deco lampshades. I imagine that Chris recently visited PT. It seems fair that my poem originates with what I’ve been visiting. And it is in the same spirit — old fashioned.
So here goes.
To Skirt
Here on the skirts of the argument
I shirk the decision, skate
on the fine ice of your scowl,
hide (metaphorically)
in my mother’s skirts,
second-guess, quiver and shake,
all skunk logic, squished,
no escape, still skirting it.