Anne Duncan
I have taken you into me, the part that walks slow enough for the whole group to keep up, a feather-boned duckling participating in the flock’s forward motion. The morning ritual: the whole of them waddling a dotted line from highway to gutter muck. Your hold on me: a brace that eases the tendons into place. Or: an alarm I’ve heard so many times it feels like a kiss to a pillow-pocked cheek. Your leg weft over, under, over my leg is familiar in the uncanny way of déjà vu scraping my memory to predict the end of the script: if time will drive us into the chiffon sunset, and will we have enough gas to make it to morning. With enough wear, there’s no more telling warp from weave, shuttle from an orbital comet. Let me try again. Yes, I have taken you in: a metal pin through the seam of me. I ache and ache, but you hold me up like the rolling stand hooked through the skull of a skeleton in the science classroom. You are here: an oil stain I will never get out of my favorite shirt, which is still my favorite shirt because it hugs me just so and smells of your herbal remedies and anyways we wore desire paths through crisp leaves kicked up into flight, and this tableau made me love the color yellow. No matter how many patches make up the whole of its fabric, I won’t let you get rid of your corduroy jacket. I would mend it for you three times over, each stitch pressing the needle into the soft pad of my thumbprint until my eyes water against orange light.
I take apart the whole addling muck. You hold time like a cheek. We undo my familiar way of aping the script: no no no no. Yes, I have you in the ache hooked through the scene. It remedies a way to patch up the hole of fabric, grid of cord. Mend over each stitch pressing needle into print, water into light.
Take your time, orbit ache. Hook through the fabric of me a stitching need.
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Anne Duncan is a poet, scholar and fiber artist. She is currently completing her master of fine arts in poetry and doctorate in literature at the University of Washington in Seattle. Her poems have been published in Yalobusha, Reed Magazine, Rogue Agent, Cherry Tree, and Permafrost.