Tuesday poem #579 : Charlene Kwiatkowski : Resolution

 

 

 

A pattern she slips into each evening
her mother’s well-greased sewing machine
and grandmother’s piano, domestic icons
gifted with assumption of an audience.
Her apartment remains a bachelor.

Feet pinning pedal, hands pressing keys,
she stitches and backstitches a song
of thick black threads, single lines
marked for attention on a garment
worn smooth as bridal satin.

But there is no dress, no yes, no canon
in D that matches ivory with ivories,
full and flowering. Will anybody hear
her taut melody, traces of desire
folded into the seams?

A lingering trill how long how long how long how long how long how long how long
threatens to unravel the song, how long
can a hand sustain the absence of its longing?

Tired, she cuts the strain.

coda

Hands undress keys, a zipper
slid down teeth. She slips out
creased like tissue paper.

 

 

 

 

Charlene Kwiatkowski is a Canadian writer whose debut poetry chapbook Let Us Go Then was published in 2021 with the Alfred Gustav Press. Her work has appeared in Arc Poetry Magazine, Maisonneuve, PRISM international, and elsewhere. She works at an art gallery and occasionally blogs at textingthecity.wordpress.com. Charlene lives in Coquitlam, BC with her husband, daughter, and twin sons.

the Tuesday poem is curated by rob mclennan