Assistant Editor Holli Carrell: In the prose poem “Blue Yarn,” Jackie Craven unsettles our understanding of domestic interiors as spaces of tranquility and comfort, creating a moving portrait of a home as restless as its inhabitant. I love how this poem asks us to interrogate and examine our lives within the spaces we inhabit, using both evocative questions and crystalline images.
To hear Craven read the piece, click below:
Blue Yarn
These rooms are searching for new rooms. When dark reflections flood the windows, the living room sighs for the bedroom. The bedroom has pillows plump as snow geese but yearns for the dining room where china cups chitter on the sideboard. Gleaming with self-importance, the cups are fussy and refuse to enter a microwave. The dining room really would prefer life as a kitchen. Can a room slip inside another room? Can rooms cuddle like Russian nesting dolls, cozy and private, or is there a Biblical commandment? I lean against the sink and watch my mottled hands swim beneath warm suds. Having no window, the kitchen imagines a universe where rice doesn’t stick to steel pots and refrigerators don’t grumble. Every room has a grievance. Even the pantry broods. Wedged between shadows, wicker bins hold greeting cards and sewing notions, blue yarn to repair the years I wish I hadn’t thrown away. What am I doing inside an old woman’s skin?
Jackie Craven has recent work in AGNI, Beloit Poetry Journal, New Ohio Review, Pleiades, Ploughshares, and others. She’s the author of Secret Formulas & Techniques of the Masters (Brick Road, 2018) and two chapbooks, Cyborg Sister (Headmistress, 2022) and Our Lives Became Unmanageable (Omindawn, 2016). Find her at JackieCraven.com
