Lace
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Crochet, a hook and one set of fingerscurling and coiling a hesitant confectionin thread that will stand up on its own.Not lace but lacy, the effortscrunching up your face, the makingof making in your shortsighted eye.Potential. How before you begin,it is clambering clean and forever.You seem to detach from the chair,from the room from the world we are inwhen you pull intent out of air.Might it be a welcome, set under two glassesof scotch on a bedside table? Might it bea collar laid over yoke like a nun'sfrom a convent in France? Could itmuster charity while callingthe willing eye to prayer? They told youlace that is not lace will not seduce.You smooth a medieval dark downthrough its gaps, stemming the curlicueloop, its interweaving.The twist of a flaw, that disappointment—how not to use it, the better to strengthenthe whole—that would be cliché—and this is lace if not yet lacy. [End Page 501]
Siobhan Campbell's third full collection of poems is Cross-Talk published by Seren Books. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Poetry, The Southern Review, Crab Orchard Review, Magma, and Agenda. Founder of the Military Writing Network, she works with veteran writers as well as distance students in the MFA in Creative Writing Program at Kingston University. She lives in Washington, D. C.
