(After Ann Hamilton)
Cotton-knotted and witch-white, I'm woven
and worn, fingers thread bare from knot talk,
each plaiting a melody, how I weave a story --
hand-made and mended to the sure-footed--
my lace work a dance, its filaments link
] what's to eat-where's shirt-lunch-home [
form to form. I read knots to decipher
how words pleat like rain over avenue and field.
Forever weaving and unweaving, I study
light's texture in knuckle work: the felt,
the clenched, the cottony stress
of noun, the vagary of verb.
Word-filled, they chatter, their tangled syntax
] worm holes there are holes worm [
warping my knotty grammar,
my embroidered eloquence.
I'm wrought from not-talk, blah-blah
knit into a day's topography.
] feminine chit-chat [
O binary language, memory's ligature strewn
across a table, unmake and unknot
me as darkness loosens its strands
and blue dawn wounds the sky.
] no worry stitch in time to tapestry [
O code of twist and fringe, you are sutured truth -- all lashed and looped
] cloth -- be still I'll talk [
and chattering like old rags.
