Three Poems by Madeleine French

 

Paper Piecing

 

The pattern’s a mirror image,

recalling those tests in school:

Where will the holes appear

when you unfold the paper?

 

I’ve learned the lines and colors

take shape in their own time.

                        Best not to ask how it works—

                        just put right sides together, and sew.

 

Once the machine is quiet

the final seam feels like a prayer.

Carefully, I press the picture

I’ve painted in fabric and

 

Peel away the back pages—

scalloped now, along the stitch lines.

Lace edgings curl and fall; questions

drift like snow around my ankles.

 

Sol y Sombra

 

From a book stall

near the Prado

a song called Huracán

pulses in rhythm

with sunlight rippling

through leaves

 

The storm breaks from

her throat, she says, to

the sky: Where are you

when I need you?

Kind of intense, for pop lyrics

even in Spain

 

Later, I’ll take my picture

with Velazquez

And as my Skechers dance with

sidewalk sun and shadow

I hear someone say, “Sol y sombra”

just as I’m thinking it, too

 

Slicing Strawberries

 

I remember driving past

the Driscoll’s plant

when my GPS avoided

an accident on the interstate

 

How I could still smell ripe berries

as I guided my car up

the I-4 West ramp, toward home

 

How tiny seeds make the skin

sandpapery, when inside the fruit

is soft and sweet

 

How this might be precisely what

the strawberries

don’t want you to know

Madeleine French lives in Florida and Virginia with her husband. You may find her in front of a sewing machine, behind a copy of Persuasion, or occasionally on Twitter, @maddiethinks. Her work appears or is forthcoming in Dust Poetry Magazine, West Trade Review, Schuylkill Valley Journal, The Westchester Review, Door Is A Jar, Roi Fainéant Press, San Antonio Review, and elsewhere.