Holding Pattern

My wardrobe is a living tribute to ’90s grunge,
the Seattle-loving, no-fucks-given posture that screams
of tangled thrift store bargain bins and mutters
the anti-consumerist mantra: I paid nothing for this.

I don’t tie my checked shirts around my waist
in public, but I do have flannel for every season,
plaid for every day of the month, and the anti-sewing kit
that’s loaded with tools of distress, not tools of repair.

We all have an era where our fashion sense hangs,
suspended, like a mobile strung by Alexander Calder.
We may shift with the winds, but our aging brains
aren’t agile enough to fully rearrange before fashion trends

have flitted away to new obscurities. I’m trapped
by the freedoms claimed by my teenage self,
shuffling comfortably in my Chuck Taylors,
wearing new holes in my jeans, slouching better with age.

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Brian U. Garrison serves as Secretary in the Science Fiction and Fantasy Poetry Association. He knows more about neuroscience and brains than he should, and less about people than he would like. He splits his time between living in his imagination and Portland, OR.