When the only ladies’ dress shop closed, <br />she was left on the street for trash, unsalvageable, <br /> <br />one arm missing, lost at the shoulder, one leg <br />at the hip. But she was wearing a blue-sequined negligee <br /> <br />and blonde wig, so they helped themselves to her <br />on a lark—drunken impulse—and for years kept her <br /> <br />leaning in a corner, beside an attic <br />window, rendered invisible. The dusk <br /> <br />was also perpetual in the garage below, <br />punctuated only by bare bulbs hung close <br /> <br />over the engines. An oily grime coated <br />the walls, and a decade of calendars promoted <br /> <br />stock-car drivers, women in dated swimsuits, <br />even their bodies out of fashion. Radio distorted <br /> <br />there; cigarette smoke moaned, the pedal steel <br />conceding to that place a greater, echoing <br /> <br />sorrow. So, lame, forgotten prank, she remained, <br />back turned forever to the dark storage <br /> <br />behind her, gaze leveled just above <br />anyone’s who could have looked up <br /> <br />to mistake in the cast of her face fresh longing— <br />her expression still reluctant figure for it.<br /><br />Claudia Emerson<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-mannequin-above-main-street-motors/
