Garment Industry
        Q: What's the difference between a tailor and a poet?
        A: One generation.
                                        —Yiddish joke

My mother lifts a seam ripper, its miniature
hook made for a world of tiny violence.

                Not only for ripping seams, she says.

There is a thread between us: we work at a
humming machine.

                            We are shirtwaist and sonnet.

She splits body from sleeve, neck from yoke.

            I sift through rag paper, write down the
                                        sound of tearing fabric.

Look. Look at the dress we sew from the shreds
of other things.

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Copyright © 2015 Jehanne Dubrow All rights reserved
from The Arranged Marriage
University of New Mexico Press
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission