The original poem by Zachary Schomburg can be read here.
New Dress Shirt exemplifies Zachary Schomburg’s unique style of illustrating ordinary objects and scenarios then igniting them with unexpected meaning using surreal and even unsettling plot twists. The poem is written in Schomburg’s signature prose style of poetry, formatted into a rectangle in the center of the page and justified for clean, newspaper-like edges. Schomberg’s formatting of his poems is not unlike his careful, almost monotone reading style; in Fjords Vol. 1, the collection in which New Dress Shirt appears, every poem takes this simple, unremarkable format, leaving nothing but his alluring, all-capitalized titles to differentiate one poem from the next at a glance.
Schomburg’s poems are brief, and in Fjords none occupy more than three-quarters of a single page. But their lengths are somewhat of an illusion; his prose style allows for plenty of room for description and detail, simply compacting traditional lines into a tighter, more concentrated format. Along with his passive reading style, Schomburg seems to use such formatting to direct attention toward the actual narratives of his poems and catch the reader off-guard, with moments and climaxes that are often striking, surreal, and avant-garde. He presents his work modestly, letting the strange, sometimes disturbing content speak for itself, without using dramatic line breaks or stanzas for emphasis. New Dress Shirt exemplifies these tendencies perfectly.
The poem opens with a standard and unremarkable scene placing the speaker at a bank, immediately introducing the new dress shirt as a focus. The woman at the bank is given a poetic voice as she showers the speaker with complements, however this is halted quickly with an abrupt “etc.”, breaking the chain of elegant clichés: “...that my eyes can light a dark room, make night into day, etc.”. This “etc.” is the first signifier of the accelerated pace of the poem, and seems to slightly foreshadow the oddities to come; flowery compliments are cast aside in the narration as Schomburg sets the reader up for the next figment of the brief plot of his poetic flash-fiction. The speaker decides he “will never take off [his] new dress shirt,” an interesting line that causes the reader to potentially question its literality, slowly hinting at and inching the poem towards the surreal. The narrative then leaves physicality and jumps into the speaker’s mind with the next line: “It is the beginning of a new life for me, a life of being noticed, of reaping reward.” The dress shirt seems to now be inflated to its maximum potential to the speaker; it has pushed him to consider a social rebirth of sorts. Here, Schomburg is mocking common overstatements involving the ego boost provided by a new garment of clothing with something of a cliché, but he adds a twist to the end of the line. “Reaping reward” stands out in the clearly overenthusiastic, yet commonplace tone held by the speaker thus far - it feels dark, again pushing the poem closer to the jarring and surreal turn it will soon take.
Schomburg plays with clichés more as the speaker explores the possibilities of a new life armed with his confidence-boosting dress shirt. The first aspiration presented - “With my new dress shirt, I will run for mayor uncontested” - gives the reader a final moment of calm, even comedic serenity before diving into the weird, graphic climax of the piece. Poking at the speaker’s newfound sense of masculinity gained from his perfectly-fitting new dress shirt, he decides he will “marry the woman at the bank, perhaps after saving her from a vicious attack by a desperate man-eating lion.” This image, which engulfs the remainder of the poem, again satirizes conventional attachment to clothing and brings a common stereotypical image of manhood to life in an uncompromising way. Schomburg works with the man-eating lion more, depicting it vividly raiding the bank, and highlighting the Hollywood-born image’s absurdity. In the end, the assumptions made of the dress shirt’s abilities are proven hollow, evidenced by the speaker’s uselessness during the lion’s attack, an event that is just asking for a masculine hero like the speaker armed with his perfect new dress shirt. The speaker himself is poked fun at in the narrative when the bank teller is referred to as “the new love of my life,” further evoking the druggish effect the dress shirt has on the speaker’s emotions and rationale. After a somewhat gory description of the lion devouring the teller, Schomburg brings the poem back full circle with a fascinating final line ensuring that the dress shirt’s aura has persevered: “I am almost certain I see that lion look at my new dress shirt, at how well it fits.” This tongue-in-cheek tone ensures Schomburg’s words are taken somewhat lightly, even after a bank teller is graphically annihilated and the setting in which the story takes place seems to crumble. He reminds the reader of the underlying voice in the poem, the meanings that are truly at stake, abandoning the speaker (seemingly unphased) in his surreal landscape.
The poem most directly addresses emotional ties to consumerism and personal image, satirizing reliance on clothing for self-confidence. It also delves into some stereotypes that connect with image, especially that of a man; the lion attack feels reminiscent of a potential romantic escapade, in which the man saves the day, but some element of reality sets in and the speaker simply stands by in shock as his love interest is killed in one of the most visual ways possible. The poem wistfully prods at the speaker’s desire for more in life, with the mention of becoming mayor and marrying the bank teller, but it is his hope that the new dress shirt will knock down all barriers and these things will be given to him with no effort involved. The speaker is looking for an answer to all his problems, a skeleton key to what he wishes to pursue in life, and adopts (or at least considers) the new dress shirt as this solution. He specifies running for mayor uncontested, and describes a far fetched scenario to lure his potential mate that doesn’t even prove practical in the hypnagogic landscape of the poem. The speaker places absolute trust in the dress shirt to get him what he wants, but the encounter with the lion proves that work will be required on his end as well.
In only a few short sentences, Schomburg transports his reader from a dreary bank line to vivid imagination, using the simple and relatable vessel of the new dress shirt as a focal point. The anecdotes of a wandering mind are let loose as the speaker stands passively, watching his fantasy crumble graphically before his eyes. Using familiar images and situations, New Dress Shirt resonates with the shopper and confidence-seeker in everyone, and should keep every reader locked in with its tight formatting and rapidly evolving plot.
New Dress Shirt appears in Zachary Schomburg's 2012 collection Fjords Vol. 1, published by Black Ocean. Click here to purchase the collection on Amazon.