From the sequence My Sister's Shadow:
My sister gives the clothing she’s outgrown
to me, two years her junior. I accept
her charity resignedly. I own
her boots (still caked with shit in which she stepped),
white blouses for 4-H (with pepper-stains
from sheep who sneezed on her at point-blank range),
her high school gym clothes (bearing the remains
of silkscreened mascots laundered into mange).
My sister’s threadbare hand-me-downs include
her schools (which teem with people she’s impressed).
Although the straitlaced sonnet was eschewed
as “too constricting,” scorned as “overdressed,”
and mothballed as “antique” ere I was born,
at least it’s something Tammy’s never worn.
The whole sequence is self-congratulation for what a brave and noble and unique thing I thought I was doing by becoming a sonnet-writing nerd, instead of another math-and-science nerd like Tammy, as everyone expected. Imagine my disappointment when I found out formalism wasn't quite as dead as my high school teachers had led me to believe.
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