East Fork:
A Journal of the Arts
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