i.
Each week the headmaster’s wife
darns us into her web of chairs: a design
to mirror the range of her eyes.
She is austere, and caught in the snare
of her husband’s alarm-clock life,
she ticks us off
when our stitches don’t mend her morning.The fabric is too big for childish hands,
and the needle too small to fit my desire
to quit this room with its young girl giggles
and smell of teacher’s perfume.
She has given me too hard a task:
the needling of a cloth
to make a pattern
for a life I can’t conceive.
But, we are her debutantes on our way
to womanhood, so she stoically treads her path
by fidgeting feet and sew-spastic fingers.Cotton eyes the needle greedily
pushing through the vacancy
like a cat through its flap to a freeing sunrise.Needle-threading is much like tying shoelaces;
poking an ant nest with a stick;
or riding a broom-proud steed
through a small gap in the fence to a wood ―
hanging there, the thread is secure as the tie
on the legs of a store-bought chook.While other busier fingers
brook the challenge of Mrs N’s stare,
my mind wanders to methods of escape.Bending slowly, head inching over genuflecting knees,
I undo a shoelace.
It’s the start of an idea.
Knots! Knots! and more knots!
So the dangling thread becomes a hangman’s noose;
a yachtsman’s ropey artistry; the tangle of fishing line
in the hands of a tyro on holiday.
Excuse me, please, I have a knot!It’s one deserving of a prize.
I try not to smile.
I try not to look proud.
She sighs, releases me from the torture-tool of linen
and starts unpicking my knotted herd.
It takes a while.
Knots can be tricky
knots can be hard to tie, unseen,
and she is soon on my third.
I am nine
and the clock tells me it’s eleven.ii.
Bridging the gap from youth to freedom
is High School and The Treadle.
In these mechanised rows knots are irrelevant.
Each machine wakes its latent industry
by the cradling of a bobbin.
We are given one to keep
so mine will live in a drawer
at home.
It will never meet the Singer, or seam its voice
to the room’s robotic choir.
I am proud I will never sew a stitch
on that maternalising denier of youth.I am told that next term I will study nutrition;
learn how to cook and how to clean a kitchen.
They are unpicking my world
and sewing me into their fabricated fiction.I am twelve
and being primed for motherhood.
- 115: SPACE
with A Sometimes
114: NO THEME 13
with J Toledo & C Tse
113: INVISIBLE WALLS
with A Walker & D Disney
112: TREAT
with T Dearborn
111: BABY
with S Deo & L Ferney
110: POP!
with Z Frost & B Jessen
109: NO THEME 12
with C Maling & N Rhook
108: DEDICATION
with L Patterson & L Garcia-Dolnik
107: LIMINAL
with B Li
106: OPEN
with C Lowe & J Langdon
105: NO THEME 11
with E Grills & E Stewart
104: KIN
with E Shiosaki
103: AMBLE
with E Gomez and S Gory
102: GAME
with R Green and J Maxwell
101: NO THEME 10
with J Kinsella and J Leanne
100: BROWNFACE
with W S Dunn
99: SINGAPORE
with J Ip and A Pang
97 & 98: PROPAGANDA
with M Breeze and S Groth
96: NO THEME IX
with M Gill and J Thayil
95: EARTH
with M Takolander
94: BAYT
with Z Hashem Beck
93: PEACH
with L Van, G Mouratidis, L Toong
92: NO THEME VIII
with C Gaskin
91: MONSTER
with N Curnow
90: AFRICAN DIASPORA
with S Umar
89: DOMESTIC
with N Harkin
88: TRANSQUEER
with S Barnes and Q Eades
87: DIFFICULT
with O Schwartz & H Isemonger
86: NO THEME VII
with L Gorton
85: PHILIPPINES
with Mookie L and S Lua
84: SUBURBIA
with L Brown and N O'Reilly
83: MATHEMATICS
with F Hile
82: LAND
with J Stuart and J Gibian
81: NEW CARIBBEAN
with V Lucien
80: NO THEME VI
with J Beveridge
57.1: EKPHRASTIC
with C Atherton and P Hetherington
57: CONFESSION
with K Glastonbury
56: EXPLODE
with D Disney
55.1: DALIT / INDIGENOUS
with M Chakraborty and K MacCarter
55: FUTURE MACHINES
with Bella Li
54: NO THEME V
with F Wright and O Sakr
53.0: THE END
with P Brown
52.0: TOIL
with C Jenkins
51.1: UMAMI
with L Davies and Lifted Brow
51.0: TRANSTASMAN
with B Cassidy
50.0: NO THEME IV
with J Tranter
49.1: A BRITISH / IRISH
with M Hall and S Seita
49.0: OBSOLETE
with T Ryan
48.1: CANADA
with K MacCarter and S Rhodes
48.0: CONSTRAINT
with C Wakeling
47.0: COLLABORATION
with L Armand and H Lambert
46.1: MELBOURNE
with M Farrell
46.0: NO THEME III
with F Plunkett
45.0: SILENCE
with J Owen
44.0: GONDWANALAND
with D Motion
43.1: PUMPKIN
with K MacCarter
43.0: MASQUE
with A Vickery
42.0: NO THEME II
with G Ryan
41.1: RATBAGGERY
with D Hose
41.0: TRANSPACIFIC
with J Rowe and M Nardone
40.1: INDONESIA
with K MacCarter
40.0: INTERLOCUTOR
with L Hart
39.1: GIBBERBIRD
with S Gory
39.0: JACKPOT!
with S Wagan Watson
38.0: SYDNEY
with A Lorange
37.1: NEBRASKA
with S Whalen
37.0: NO THEME!
with A Wearne
36.0: ELECTRONICA
with J Jones