MASTER CLASS
Demonstrate on mine, I say.
I’m one of the three who’ve
never used a sewing machine.
I remember feeling this way in
science class. The teacher
obliges but the rest of the job
is up to me, and like a horse
that knows incompetence
when it feels it, the machine
bolts. Not your fault, others
say. The woman next to me,
her patchwork near perfect,
suggests embroidery for
disguise. It’ll add some
colour too, she says, as if
ornamental needlework were
something I could easily do.
By the same author
Tolstoi Learned to Ride a Bike at an Age When Most of Us Cash in Chips by Annette Barnes & Stuart Friebert
There we were, watching the parade, while he climbed up