“Implicate Knitting” (2010)

322 Review is now defunct, but before that, they published this (no archive available):

Implicate Knitting
First appeared in 322 Review (2010)

The warm bamboo needles slide mathematically
within the curves of my practiced fingers:
snick
through
under,
loop back lift.

The pear-green wool links to itself
in the recursive continuum of a single knot
any physicist would recognize—
string theory.
Somehow,
a scarf emerges.

The equations of warmth are indecipherable to me,
like the dozens of people who call me friend
but who wouldn’t know the heavy stitches
that bind me together
if they tore them out personally.
Some of them have tried, seems like.
The names they use for closeness
are scratchy like the wool, and odd—
their friendship, mis-stitched and holey.

On these cold days,
I’m divisible by zero.
I knit, and watch my stash of scarves grow.