OXIDANT | ENGINE : Issue 12
Emily Hyland
the sweater
​
her last two years my mother knits a sweater
yarn soft interspersed stripes of multicolor
her hands not natural at needled motion
so she curses at chemo when freezing fingers
fail to loop a cord of thread in cable casting
on on she commits to the long sleeve
backstitches and stumbles knuckled
arthritic undoes newly planted rows
like carrots seeds neatly tucked into a field
threads root into their earthly plot to grow
interweaving into wooly frock but poorly so
line by line she pulls her work apart
invasive carcinoma to the garment’s cells
eventual unfinishing her goal
she unravels the loom like Penelope
confined to cancer center cubicle
unlike the seaside weaver looking out
wry undoer of funeral shrouds
undoer of destiny my mother’s latent hands
colder and colder with every toxic IV droplet
down down into the tangles of her dying
knots of sweater yarn bundled at her bedside
half-sleeve limp and unsuccessful
at quelling the place she would go
Emily Hyland’s poetry appears in a multitude of journals. A restaurateur and English professor from New York City, Emily is a founder/partner of the national restaurant groups Pizza Loves Emily and Emmy Squared Pizza. Her cookbook, Emily: The Cookbook, was published by Ballantine Books, an imprint of Random House, in 2018. She is a member of the Community of Writers and studies the writing practice method in the Ghost Ranch desert with Mirabai Starr as much as she can.