Straight-Laced
—on being asked why I complicate my poem’s message by writing in formal verse
The corset has its uses. Bones and lace,
the girls pressed high, now bursting from their vase,
creating crevices, so delicate—
tuck lavender inside. Or chocolate.
Above the nether zone this garment ends;
beneath its edge, the derrière extends
unfettered from the hipbone toward the knees—
free to parse whatever meters please.
Between the two extremes, the belly skin
is stretched deliciously, sublimely thin.
Dear bard, might not a touch of ess and emm,
from time to time, deliver you your gem?
Before you scorn The Form, consider well
the whip, pantoum and sonnet, villanelle.
Diane Lee Moomey has lived and wandered around the US and Canada and now lives in Half Moon Bay, California, where she co-hosts a monthly poetry series. A regular reader at Bay Area poetry venues, she has had work published in The MacGuffin, Mezzo Cammin, Think, PoeTalk, California Poetry Quarterly, Caesura, and Red Wheelbarrow, and been nominated for a Pushcart prize. Recently, she has won prizes and honorable mentions with the Ina Coolbrith Circle and in the Soul Making Keats Literary Contests. Her newest poetry chapbook is Make for Higher Ground (Barefoot Muse Press, 2021). https://www.pw.org/content/diane_moomey