I am learning to knit with my hands.
There is too much hurt in this world to hold
a needle, so I let my fingers bruise and bleed
onto the wool.
I watch an online tutorial
with an elegant woman speaking French.
I do not speak French.
The measurements of each word
are not the same. Her vowels wrap around
each child, holds them safe.
The history we are patterning
has a different texture. My blanket begins
to curve like a body leaning soft
against my own. Like fear.
I tell strangers that I am making a blanket,
show them my empty hands,
the dropped stitches. I do not show them
the real one. That is for warmth.
I stand in the park flushed with ravens,
where, I am told, the most suicides are found—
something about wanting the last glimpse to be beautiful.
The junipers and ponderosa pines lean darkly.
This is not the real poem. That came to me
in a rib of sleep, and when I woke, the sound
of my child crying took its place.
READ MORE
Joined by his son Billy, an emotional Jimmy Kimmel makes the case for CHIP [USA Today]
CHIP deadline looms, panicking families [FOX 31]
By next month, 600,000 children will lose their health insurance [Quartz]
Megan Merchant lives in the tall pines of Prescott, AZ. She is the author of two full-length poetry collections: Gravel Ghosts (Glass Lyre Press, 2016), The Dark’s Humming (2015 Lyrebird Award Winner, Glass Lyre Press, 2017), four chapbooks, and a forthcoming children’s book with Philomel Books. She was awarded the 2016-2017 COG Literary Award, judged by Juan Felipe Herrera. She is an Editor at The Comstock Review.
Photo by Jenna Norman.
