The Winning Poem of the 2008 Robert Frost Award

(Judged by JD Scrimgeour)

Double Wedding Ring

by Elizabeth Klise von Zerneck
of Peoria, Illinois

How cramped a lot

to be a slave-stitched quilt,

to be Cathedral Church in cast-off gingham, or

old Shoofly sewn in blocks of red

and studded with a dirty pinwheel heart.

How wretched to

be born from tattered scraps

of common cotton cloth and penny thread to form

dark sheets of patchwork squares. How small

and mocking to be comforter, though frail

and thin. By night,

to rest on worn-out laps

and later beds and bodies in attempts to cut

cold cabin winds ... and then, by day,

to hang against wind-splintered fence rails, or

along the backs

of peeling porch chairs, there

to air under the harsh spilled Southern sun. Bow Ties,

Log Cabin, Flying Geese: stitched fast

from cloth, one at a time, the quilts displayed

their solemn, spot-

stained fronts. How sore a fate! The dazed parade

of masters, mules, and slaves looked past

the fence-draped quilts; just one or two cast up their eyes

in quickened glance to where

the quilts hung lax.

Those certain sharp-eyed few knew to look for

the Monkey Wrench (go hide away

the tools), to recognize good Wagon Wheel (pack what

is needed), next perhaps

to note the bright

zigzags of Drunkard's Path (stagger your trail),

and then, one day, to see the fall

and rise of Tumbling Boxes (leave tonight). Not warm

those quilts (all shred and gaps),

not expert (too

coarse, primitively sewn), not song, not art …

but, hanging there, those blankets read

as eloquent as prose: their patchwork words free-born

from thread, their phrases built

from stitch and knot.