Costume

A tablecloth is a costume for a table. A tablecloth is a costume for a person. A wrapper is a costume for a rock if you’re playing a trick. A snowball is a costume for a smaller snowball. The horses by the empty cul-de-sac are a costume for an idea. I keep writing about the horses, their nearness. My houseplants sit on the ledge above my desk, so I write about my houseplants, leaves dressing the space. Their depiction a costume, not of or for plants, but grief. I’m tired of writing about my houseplants. The horses live just past my window, so I write about the horses. Or, they did, I haven’t seen them since the first snow of the season. This is my first winter near the horses. A month before mom died, we went Jet Skiing. She disappeared around the bend of the bay for long enough that I was convinced that Beth drowned her. The horses, as far as we know, could be dead or around the hillside. Some distant vibraphone seeps in. I can’t see the instrument. A fan as a costume for the sound, transformative agent. In a dream, T and I roast peaches for dinner only to discover it’s not a meal in the oven at all, but a necklace, sticky-sugared open halves run through with twine. Costume jewelry. Peaches. What else.

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MAGGIE NIPPS is an MFA candidate in poetry at the University of Idaho, where she is the managing editor of Fugue. Her work appears in Peach Mag, mercury firs, Figure 1, Pinwheel, Sporklet, and elsewhere. She is the co-founder/co-editor of Afternoon Visitor, a journal of poetry and hybrid text.

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