The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: The Velvet Book by Rae Gouirand

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The Velvet Book

Is it bright ahead? Enthusiastic? Yes and dark.

From Old Provençal via vulgar Latin
diminutive of shaggy cloth, nap of cloth, tuft

of hair, vellus, fleece, suffixed form of
*wel to tear, to pull, see svelte which evokes

lengthened, pulled, plucked. A certain kind
of night. I’ve read a little of velvet transparent,

breath held for air liased through it.
Devoré, burned out. Embossed, hammered,

mirror velvet, nacré like shot silk
its iridescence bolts in two directions at once,

pile on pile, Utrecht, voided, and
wedding ring, a chiffon type fine enough

to be drawn through that blinking.
All catalogued, like that shade of just-past violet

as night snaps. Velvet is back
the announcement. Arguing the pile,

the plush, the tongue upon
the back. Some suggestion of a likening,

the loops of the warp thread
left exposed. The soft, deciduous covering

of a growing antler
copper umber and lawn. Sixteen I was night.

When I reached back I felt
my path advance. Thought of what always meant.

That fruition. Lucre. Gravy.
Beetles’ shades flying. Everything raised

the only question towards what.
Again and again short fibers between sense

and sensing. Where does
out start. What is velvet but:

before the limit something begins.

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