On the beach I keep one tiny stitch
of my mother alive, try to preserve
the synapses between periods of crazy,
the quiet between percussive thuds,
and amphetamine highs, crests
and tumbles; there is stasis between
the water’s advance and retreat, between
swallowing and spitting back everything,
a time with no charged arcs, no sparks—
just a predictable but graceful dance
like that my two needles execute, sliding
into each woolly loop, then out, knitting
something to place in my daughter’s hand,
something much more certain than sand.
is a retired Rhode Island Literacy teacher who now lives an artsy life in Bluffton, South Carolina. She writes poetry, paints, spins, and knits. Audrey received her MFA in Poetry from Vermont College of the Fine Arts in 2005 and attended the renowned Bread Loaf Writers Conference. She served as a contributing editor of the Hunger Mountain Literary Journal for many years. Audrey now facilitates adult poetry workshops. Her work appears in journals including The Comstock Review, California Quarterly, The Griffin, and Urban Spaghetti, and in several anthologies.
