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Classic and Contemporary Poetry
THE QUILT, by KAREN SWENSON Poet's Biography
First Line: Alive in a brown stucco house
Last Line: She smoothed the quilt across their bed.
Subject(s): Quilts; Sewing; Women
First Line: Alive in a brown stucco house
Last Line: She smoothed the quilt across their bed.
Subject(s): Quilts; Sewing; Women
Alive in a brown stucco house
picketed by thorns of a barberry hedge
(in fall their berries spattered red
as a smashed Christmas ball)
she sat at the front window in
a horsehair rocker sleek as
the bottoms of her pots and pans.
She hated as she dug the needle
into the widening pattern of the quilt -
a patchwork of her deciduous dresses
radiating from the center of satin,
white stone cast first.
The memories of material
spread their circles around it.
A swatch of evening dress never worn.
A rectangle of the coat she made herself.
She pinned them and pierced them,
fettering the failures together
with a tense silk thread,
cross stitch, blanket stitch, chain stitch,
her embroidery precise as the steel shaft.
When the design was updated by
the lining of her worn-out suit,
she smoothed the quilt across their bed.
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