Jules Collins

When I opened the big box I saw
springing forth, embroidered
with bold patches of colors
a great blue quilt
you had rendered just for me!

At first I hung it--I dared not even touch it
but it was so soft
so I slept with it every night
even brought it to the beach
and now it is sand-eaten along the edges.

I think of you in upstate New York
bent over your black sewing machine
in a house I’ve never seen
with your grown twin daughters
twelve years away.

I stopped using the quilt a long time ago.
It lies, rumpled at the bottom of a pile of blankets.
I wonder, now, what it would be like to wrap myself up in blue
to cozy myself up to memories of you.
Sister, my sister.

 

Where is my spirituality?

I think of a large, white partitioned empty office
then I see a frightened Keanu Reeves
creeping among the cubicles
and realize I haven’t taken the red pill yet.
So I take it.
It is composed of tiny granules
that charge through my body
and cut to my consciousness
where first they gather like the priests of my childhood
and meditate on a moment.
Then they release themselves like birds into my atmosphere
flying like the hands of my father when he spoke,
singing like the pot struck by my sister--
mixing mashed potatoes for our supper;
lighting on the edges of my ignorance
like my mother’s fingers smoothing my sheets late at night.

Jules Collins writes poetry and fiction as well as various articles that often pertain to Generation X. Soundings East selected her as the winner of their chapbook contest and she is currently working on expanding one of her short stories into a novel. She hails from Woburn, Massachusetts where she resides with her trusty feline sidekick "Cub Scout."

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