Quilt Superstitions

At twenty-one he gets a Freedom Quilt.
She gets to make thirteen quilts for her dowry
but will never marry
if she sews hearts on a quilt.

A dowry is no guarantee.
If she takes the last stitch
or sews hearts on a quilt
or doesn’t finish a quilt

or puts in the last stitch
or breaks a needle on her wedding quilt
or doesn’t finish a quilt
or quilts the thirteenth quilt

or breaks a needle on her wedding quilt
or quilts the top before she’s engaged
or quilts the thirteenth quilt
or breaks a thread

or quilts the top before she’s engaged
or gives him a Wandering Foot quilt
or breaks a thread
or breaks a vined border

he’ll never settle down
and she’ll be an old maid
a broken border of vines
and misfortune.

She'll be an old maid,
never to marry.
He'll have the fortune
to have a Freedom Quilt.





The poem was inspired by a lecture by Lisa Erlandson as reported in The Gainesville Daily Register by Heather Pilkington, February 29, 2012. https://www.gainesvilleregister.com/community/quilting-myths-busted/article_0193c469-705b-53e1-a99c-4e94ef4ddedd.html

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Cindy Veach is the author of Her Kind (CavanKerry Press), a 2022 Eric Hoffer Montaigne Medal finalist, and Gloved Against Blood (CavanKerry Press) a finalist for the Paterson Poetry Prize and a Massachusetts Center for the Book Must Read. Her poems have appeared in the Academy of American Poets Poem-a-Day series, AGNI, Michigan Quarterly Review, Poet Lore, and elsewhere. Recipient of the Philip Booth Poetry Prize and Samuel Allen Washington Prize, she is poetry co-editor of MER.