YO
means yarn over,
a maneuver
used to create a hole
surrounded by a strand.

Dear one, the impulse
to poke
a stick
in a hole
is irresistible.

Delay tying off the knot,
a foreplay of thread
whereby the linear
becomes a plane
length becomes breadth

Some people do it to relax.

I’m not sure Dickens understood knitting—
Mme Defarge, nemesis in sabots
with a clicking of needles—
but he knew how to string
us along, make us yearn
for the yarn
to go on,
how to build our expectations
to a climax.

Dear one, I don’t know how to gauge you,
so I ply you with wools and acrylics,
rayons and cottons, worsted weight
and fingering,
play you with hooks,
but you know which string
to pull to unravel all the knots,
leave me stranded with a box of yarns.

—
Sherry Chandler’s second full-length book of poems, The Woodcarver’s Wife, celebrates the cycles of life on her small farm in Kentucky. She has been nominated three times for a Pushcart. She has been published in a number of online and print publications, most recently in the Blue Fifth Review, Kestrel, and the Louisville Review. She posts micro poetry on Twitter as @Bluegrass Poet.