Threads

Ill-fitting—like the too-long sweater
that needs unraveling from the bottom up.

Blue, then rose, then black: a maze
of stitches. Nothing’s flat,
nothing knit-purl easy.

Purling along, I see couples at
Berkeley Rep—stooped men with

vests and wives with cardigans—
raveled together too many years,
the threads impossible to cut.

Besides, scissors are missing, stitches
uneven, yarn wound too tight.

How does a woman choose the wrong
path then live and live until—
aperture—the moment a peddler

offers to steal her baby, her gold,
her heart: whichever she can spare?

Generous—the wink, the blown kiss—
pack on his back humming
with buttons and ribbons and yarn.

Do something new, he says. Sew a week.
Cut up a year. Crochet days on the edges.

Neither tinker nor tailor, he can’t mend
a frayed morning. And since his mother
never told him not to pull a thread,

he tugs at every one. Heavy pack but
weightless heart, he’d give any woman

buttons from his coat, strings from
0his purse. Uncoupled, he
eyes the vanishing point ahead.

That sweater’s old, he whispers. Uncoil
the threads—black, rose, blue—

and strew them out for nesting birds.
Then take my fine-spun yarn
to weave, as we two softly take our leave.

***

Susan Terris

Susan Terris’ poetry books include CONTRARIWISE (Time Being Books), NATURAL DEFENSES (Marsh Hawk Press), FIRE IS FAVORABLE TO THE DREAMER (Arctos Press), POETIC LICENSE (Adastra Press), and EYE OF THE HOLOCAUST (Arctos Press). Recent work appears in The Iowa Review, Field, The Journal, Colorado Review, Prairie Schooner, Shenandoah, The Southern Review, Volt, Denver Quarterly, and Ploughshares. For 7 years, with CB Follett, she edited RUNES, A Review Of Poetry. Now she edits for Pedestal Magazine and is poetry editor, with Ilya Kaminsky, of In Posse Review. She had a poem from Field published in PUSHCART PRIZE XXXI.