Four Poems

Madame Heger does some late night needlework

Truth can be snatched from a bin
by moonlight, then smoothed flat –
the presence of love, evidenced

by needlecraft. The limits
of its professed states
jointed with a seam. White thread

detracts nothing from vocabulary,
red stabs home the pain behind
each phrase. Sentences find their own

weight when split apart – valency
when tacked neatly into place.
Should Constantin awake, pause

by the apples in the polished bowl,
ask what keeps me from our bed so late –    
how to explain the fruits of samplers
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