Fashion

by Jen Grace Stewart

When I first learned to touch myself
it was over the top of my panties, 

otherwise I didn’t dare—my body was 
God’s and a nameless man’s. St Theresa said

God has no body but your own, but 
I hadn’t read that yet, so I fingered

around elastic edges, learned how
their roughness chafed me like guilt,

how I liked that separation—between
the nakedness and knowing it. 

That was the story, wasn’t it? In Eden 
the first sign you’d discovered what 

you ought not know, you begin by covering, 
leafed by shame—God never fooled 

for an instant. Still, he’s the one who makes 
the veil between places holy and unclean,

fashions clothing out of hides—
knowing even then, I suppose, how 

we fetishize unhiding. How touching 
our own skin in the dark will feel 

like trespass, make us crave struggle 
more than bliss.

::

Jen Grace Stewart is the author of Madonna, Complex (Cascade Books 2020), Latch (River Glass Books 2019) and Visitations (Finishing Line Press 2015). Her poems have been published or are forthcoming in Denver Quarterly, North American Review, AGNI, Colorado Review, Beloit Poetry Journal, EcoTheo Review, Western Humanities Review and elsewhere. A native of Colorado, she teaches writing at the University of Colorado, Boulder.

Image: Ira Vishnevskaya

ID: two pale hands touching in sunlight.