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Poem Of The Week: Silk Shirtwaisters From Paris By Janice Warman

Silk shirtwaisters from Paris

Clearing clogged cupboards and
cluttered shelves, among cracked
compacts and drawers stuffed
with wads of cotton-wool,

we found bright silk shirtwaisters
from Paris, a heavy gold chain,
a rope of fat, dark amber beads,
mother-of-pearl opera glasses,

an etched scarab in its polished
wooden box, and a slim notebook
that held a single line: Alzheimer’s
is an inflammatory disease.

The desiderata of a life is the focus of Janice Warman’s fine elegy: the cornucopia of an existence – the beads, silk shirtwaisters and etched scarab – is revealed in exotic counterpoint to the relentless corrosion of dementia, making of the contrast an oxymoron. That the depredation of Alzheimer’s is conceived in the mother figure’s own hand, presumably in an early, lucid moment, lends the otherwise fulsome scene the sharpest of ironies.

But what remains in the reader’s own memory is the polychromatic vigour of the tableau, the ‘cluttered’ alliteration and changeful rhythm that precisely describe a jumbled and makeshift scene, and the prosaic final line, whose prognosis will one day include the fragmentation of a mind as kaleidoscopically incoherent as the bedroom’s inventory.

‘Silk shirtwaisters from Paris’ is taken from the from Janice Warman’s forthcoming collection, These are the Things We Have Lost, to be published by Fly on the Wall Press, January, 2026.

Available for pre-order here.

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