STELLA PADNOS

GENTLY USED COATS
or THE KNITTER

She knits and makes a man.

Her fingers dance to make his body red.

She pulls him up with needles, with pining.

Eyes closed.
The man in her hands unopened.
He is tight around her clinging fingers
until pierced and looped
her favorite part.
When she is done,
she will draw him up over her,
a blanket or sweater.
He takes her shape.
Her bare body holds him together.
She misses him most in winter, when all she wishes
is for him in her lap like yarn.

w/o WEIGHT

John Glenn is weightless at 77 while
Aunt Marsha, 59, lies earthbound and released.
Older people in space, on Earth or away.

John, all sensor-studded harness and helmet,
doesn't know what's happening back home.
Gravity lifts off parts of Marsha
and leaves her eyes to watch
the rest sink, to watch
a balloon-kick of wind before
wearing the slow descent.
Her soul is too light, John,
and we're losing her to
you in outer space.
Filled with absence,
we breathe slow through the ripping.

Everything gathers momentum to move away faster.
In February the leaving won't stop.
By March spring gains weight and
scrapes the paint off translucence.
An early spring quickens.

Stella Padnos is a student in City College's graduate creative writing program. Her poetry has been recently published in Brooklyn Review, Smartish Pace, and various online journals. Feel free to send her a note at Schmooth99@aol.com