I tremble sometimes when I remember what that quilt knows
The tomato thrown in one fight.
Fist through sheetrock in another fight.
Cracked wrist, a hairline, missed in the first
x-ray. Easy to miss whispered the nurse. Fight
of words and words — circling, jabbing,
right cross, left hook — fight
as my fingers work the stitches, sharp
needle drawing blood with each stitch. Fight
of cold-eyed stares, sorry, silence, make up sex.
Nights and nights at the wooden frame fighting
sleep to finish that quilt — a gift for a couple
whose marriage would last — I fight
for ours, appliqué hope, appliqué forgiveness,
appliqué my fault until I run out of fight.
[This poem’s title is a line from the poem “Rose of Sharon,” by Jane Wilson Joyce.]
◆. ◆ ◆. ◆. ◆
What Women Say Only in Quilts
There are three quilts a woman should make before she is married.
—Grace Marks (Alias Grace, Margaret Atwood)
Flower Basket
Every woman has a willow basket to fill and empty
fill and empty — eggs, fruit, vegetables, flowers. Whole
cloth with appliqué and needlework — peonies, roses,
vines, birds — or pieced blocks of half-square triangles
set on point with rectangles and one square. A catalog
of her coming labors. A basket to collect and bring
to and from kitchen, barn, neighbors, root cellar, garden,
town, cemetery. The geometry of a housewife’s duties
both warning and expectation that she will carry.
Pandora’s Box
Sewn from squares and sixty-degree diamonds
the blocks are stacked, angled with a dark side
and light side creating dimension and disorder
like a mind with two sides that coexist. Towers
of precarious boxes steadied by the bite of the needle,
each stitch a message for the bride —
here are boxes for what cannot be said. Blind
stitch the edges with the strongest thread —
buttonhole, darning, carpet, upholstery.
Tree of Paradise
Triangles in patterned blocks placed on point alternating
with solid blocks. Light and dark fabric, right sides
together, scant quarter inch seams pressed to the darkest side.
Tall, majestic, fruited, one tree in each square pieced
right side up then upside down, mirror images — a
second I, a way to survive. Not the Tree of Knowledge,
but a healing tree, cure for parasites, fevers, anemia,
an astringent for wounds to stop the bleeding. Border
of snaking vines with yellow pinprick eyes.