The New Rug

Braids tight; woven firm in form.
Frames replacing cycles,
borders where curves once twisted.
Time in the dusty curls,
daunting with its intricacy.
Past washed off, mistakes tidied-
crafted perfection smooth.

The length, the bolts.

Reworkings and melds.

The sum of creation,
the warming of cloth.

In the bends and the knits,

The infirm moments:

Vulnerable and spent.

To devise new. 

Recognition

The Lady of Shalott Escapes

The smell of damp wood,
The breeze of a windowed fan-
The paneled half octagon of my room:
Smooth, reflective, and stained.

The birds in the maples-
Robins puffed and full of slow song.
The voyeur neighbor mowing:
Under the willow, into the marsh.

I-
A Geist, a phantom.
More memory than mist –
A shadow of a star without space.

I waited. I paused.

I let all energy be guilted away-
And lingered.

Taking little notice of freedom,
I accepted the priest’s notes on important traits:
manilla smiles and cello hips,
fertility, obedience, and chasteness.

And was told to catalog them as:
Life goals.

 Then from across another world-
A wide window of hope and
culture appeared before me:
Books, technology, philosophy-
the world and it’s assumed sinners,
the educated and the wise,
feminists and revolutionized:
They slid into my skin –
(Informed and brilliant)
Raising my questions and my sight-
My perception and understanding alive!

 My amazon heart, my graceless frame-
Finally liberalized, educated, and free!

The towering ivy left behind with
the cross (that was never carried by Jesus.)

I hastily cast my meekness aside-
And
Like a shot-
I soared into the warmth of self.

I, woman, and creator,
The true God of earth,
No longer bound by men or their ineptest.

stolen Yet Shielding.

 

A thief once said that the broken retain nothing.
That my voice would scatter, unbending the night.

 And yet, I can sense: the fall, the break-
the fragility of edge,
the negligence of rough.

 I am one thousand splinters-
shards so small that if I open,
The sequined deep would spill.

in the tiny,
the glittering of mi historia-
I, the intuitive-
sink and protect,
consenting my sol,
(my gentle, my warmth)
to share, protect, and shield.

(A broken vessel may not be held, but it can flow and part.)

Rachel Hoermann