Technique
Laura-Gray Street

 

 

Anchor point threaded to

a frame point, then a bridge.

 

Frame joined, now spokes

for pivoting through sticky

 

spiral to centering hub.

Then the wait for something

 

to land, relinquish. So fine

is your radius of cross-

 

stitched glue, each night’s

hunting wears it threadbare;

 

each morning you must

swallow the dregs. Yes,

 

of what you’ve produced.

You feed on your own

 

shopworn paths. The taste

is bitter and tangled but

 

placental rich, and you

keep that first bridge

 

line intact, a wisp of

syntax suspended—

 

nascent embroidery

to scaffold, fix

 

onto the moment

something in it

 

trembles.

 

 

~~~~~

Laura-Gray Street is author of Pigment and Fume (Salmon Poetry) and co-editor with Ann Fisher-Wirth of The Ecopoetry Anthology (Trinity UP). Her work has appeared in Yellow Chair Review, The Colorado Review, Poecology, Poet Lore, Terrain.org, and elsewhere. Street holds an MA from UVA and MFA from Warren Wilson. She is associate professor of English and directs the Creative Writing Program at Randolph College in Lynchburg, VA. More at www.lauragraystreet.com.