I need to fix these moments on a skewer:
1. Lace at window catching spark of salvia beyond the porch.
2. Flickering curtains making music without sound.
3. Old dog snoring like the warning sound on a truck backing up.
A shish-kebob of instants,
a popcorn garland of candids.
Take this patchwork quilt under my side,
bought in a junk shop in Landrum, South Carolina,
each square plucked from tea-towel, Sunday best,
play-clothes, and pillowcase, then laid down.
I myself am wearing a skirt
made from blue curtains that hung
in our apartment till it was time to leave Dhaka.
Authentic moments, I’m telling you!
A long way from those fabric squares
from craft stores, mass-produced then cut
to be reassembled for the suburban quilter.
Or weirder still, solid fabric printed
to look like patchwork.
Does anyone cut that up? Under my thumb
I sniff the stitches from 1953 giving way.
And where is my sewing box, anyway?
The thimble my grandmother brought from Radautz
missing for thirty years...
Whom should I ask to lick this thread?
The me who rules on the genuine or the me who dozes?
Get out the plastic thimble from the big-box craft store.
Lay the big knot down the wrong side up, let it hover
above the cloth horizon, just like
my dog’s ears suddenly jangled awake,
reversible pop-ups of cartilage and fur.
is a native of Washington, D.C., who has published poems in Gargoyle, Prick of the
Spindle, Beltway Poetry Quarterly, FIELD, and elsewhere. Her radio commentaries
have aired on public radio's Living On Earth, Interfaith Voices, and Washington
DC’s Metro Connection; she’s been a fellow at the Virginia Center for
the Creative Arts, the Millay Colony, and elsewhere. She’s writing a memoir about
completely unplugging her two kids, then aged 8 and 5, from the TV, DVD player, and
computer.