Old Sofa Repair
after Frances E. W. Harper
A woman sits on a worn sofa her hands moving deftly with needle and thread repairing the torn armrest where a cat had sharpened its claws next to her a half-eaten plate of fried chicken
the smell of varnish and cooking oil fills the small cluttered room a stack of old receipts and bills teeters on the edge of a chair a fly buzzes around the food
I borrowed from Frances E. W. Harper's attention to everyday life and the struggles of ordinary people, and took it to a quiet, mundane scene of a woman repairing a sofa, where two unrelated things, the repair and the food, sit next to each other without explanation. I tried to capture her straightforward and unadorned style in the poem's syntax and language.