Not hand-me-downs, those
become our own,
mysteriously finding an easy secondary life.
Not
your dead mother's night gown,
that piece of fleece
falls like familiar snow on your shoulders.
Not
the wedding dress that seeded
your sister's nuptials, pure silk
seems to kiss every body new.
Not
clowning, clowns
dress in secret authenticity.
Like
this: Three nuns traveled
to the city from the rural Mother House.
Together
they longed
to try on the cut of the secular world.
Guilty
and giggling, they borrowed poor-box clothes
from the fabulous cathedral.
That
day they became lovely laity,
only slightly stained,
walking down Park Avenue in other people's clothes.
Jane
Taylor's poems and prose have been published in Whetstone,
Hubbub, Spillway, New Plains Review, Red Cedar Review, Zone
3 and various other journals. She recently finished a M.A.
in English/Creative Writing at University of Central Oklahoma
with Carol Hamilton on her committee.

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