“All right, Mr. DeMille, I’m ready for my closeup.” - Gloria Swanson, playing Norma Desmond in Sunset Boulevard

Karen Rigby is the author of the poetry books Chinoiserie (Ahsahta Press, 2012) and Fabulosa (JackLeg Press, 2024). A National Endowment for the Arts literature fellow, her poems are published in journals such as Poetry Northwest, Bennington Review, and The London Magazine. She is a freelance book reviewer in Arizona.

Welcome to the Poets Weave. I'm Romayne Rubinas Dorsey. Karen, what poems have you brought for us today?

On Marion Cotillard’s 2008 Oscar Dress

Glamour is a mermaid silhouette: Jean Paul Gaultier

in scalloped lines, X-back sweeping to a fishtail hem. 

Never mind white like wedding cake piping or fit 

like second skin. What I love about sleeveless 

couture is negative space:

collarbone, shoulders, neck

fugitive as the first crocus. The dress stops 

everyone on the red carpet—including me,

the viewer at home—

     a silk aerialist 

spiraling onto the stage. It’s that color of palladium,

the exact moment thread galvanizes 

air. The day I watch you playing Édith Piaf

I understand the brute song housed

in the chest finds a way out.  

What’s in a dress? Stitch. Scaffold. Silver edge. 

A piano hammering notes pure as jet. 

The best dress I ever wore was forest green velvet

tapered to a bee’s waist. The skirt hung like a bell.

Glamour is muscle made movement. A body turned salt.

------

Derby Hats

Cartwheel hats. Feathers and fascinators at Churchill Downs, 

each one a ringed planet. Give me the black picture hat, danger 

slung over one eye. A hat to stop thoroughbreds in their paddocks. 

Not the ¡ay, caramba! hat loud as a multiplex or the upbeat 

Breton in pastel straw, but the milliner’s best, fabulosa hat

paired with elbow-length gloves. You know the one: 

Gloria Swanson’s poolside brim taking its place 

in the sun. Not the veiled pillbox. Revival peach baskets. 

Buckets or cloches. I want the glamorous panther skulking 

right in the center of the grandstand. The silk, funereal hat 

adorned with nothing but a lethal pin. The merciless hat. 

The damned hat blocked on a wooden mold, shaped 

to midnight perfection. Hat a villainess wears on coastal drives.

I want the Hollywood hat to motor in. The hat they’ll book me in.

-----

Norma Desmond Descending the Staircase as Salome,

Sunset Boulevard, 1950

The heart’s declensions beat against

the newsreel storm. The beaded shawl

ropes through my arms. The script

would have you believe grief muscled

into me: asked for, and given the head

of a saint. When the klieg lights sear

my skin I don’t remember the body

bloating in the pool or the Black Maria

nosing down my drive. I don’t remember

when I shot Joe Gillis—only the blue

flute singing. I could live forever

raising my own hand to my neck,

each time surprised by its cool pulse.

In that kohl-rimmed prime

I calculate seductions stair by stair.

Between the keyless rooms and the city

that loved me no one speaks as if

my crossing were the deposition

of a god. Blood winters in my veins.

The hammered air burns lonely

as bones turning in sleep.

You're listening to the poems of Karen Rigby on the Poets Weave. I'm Romayne Rubinas Dorsey.