“Objects, Stripped of Their Power” by Kristine Nowak

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In an antique store, there is a large photograph
with a tag that reads: Victorian Lady, Circular Frame, $60.

She looks off to the left of the frame
like she is gazing out at the ocean;

her hair is pinned to her head
like an elaborate series of silk cushions—

but there’s only an era
where her name used to be.

Below her portrait are two baby shoes set in bronze
and a shelf of cookbooks stained with some meal

that was tasted fifty years ago.
So this is what is left after a life—

objects that fall away from each other
almost like a body loses the ties between its parts

after life passes from it. This photograph, these books—
and this wedding dress, long-sleeved, hand-made

and lined with ribbon-threaded lace,
but almost as yellow as dust.

I imagine a woman choosing the gauzy fabric,
threading the ribbons, sewing the wrist clasps

into place. Later, zipping the dress along
the precise seam of its zipper

and reaching, with her other hand and the edge
of her breath to snap the clasps closed.

-Kristine Nowak

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