Three Sisters, by Helena Feder

Three Sisters, by Mabel Pugh (USA) 1939

Three Sisters

Spinnin, weavin, snippin, you said. But I’m glad there’re three of us. I know, three means one is always ganged up on, like when you and Agnes left me out of that double-date with those guys from town, or when you both pretended to be mad that I was givin myself airs after Jean told Mother I bought rouge and she hit me with the belt. But I’m still glad. Two girls are always fightin, Mother said, bitter like greens after a frost.

I say if there was only two of us we wouldn’t look right. Just look at our hands, loopin and mendin and keepin place in the almanac. If there were just two of us I’d see you’re not readin the sheet. You’ve sailed ahead, somewhere past the canvas.

Helena Feder

Helena Feder is the author of Ecocriticism and the Idea of Culture (2014/2016) and many articles, essays, interviews, and poems. She is the editor of several journal issues and two books: You Are the River (NCMA 2021) and Close Reading the Anthropocene (Routledge 2021). She is Associate Professor of Literature and Environment at ECU, and currently working on her first book of poems.