Marriage, Metaphors, and the Art of Looking Fierce in Embroidery
ABS Believes:
If you can’t roar out loud, stitch your rebellion into fabric.
Some women wear strength. Others sew it—and let it outlive them.
Meet Aunt Jennifer: The Quietest Rebel in the Yarn Aisle
Adrienne Rich gave us poetry that raged. But Aunt Jennifer’s Tigers doesn’t rage—it purrs through clenched teeth. It’s a poem that looks like a domestic scene but burns with suppressed thunder.
Aunt Jennifer isn’t marching. She’s not holding signs. She’s not even speaking. She’s embroidering. Silently. Carefully. Permanently. Because when your voice isn’t safe in the world, you put it in the art that outlasts your fear.
The Poem: Three Stanzas, One Needle, and a Whole Lot of Patriarchy
Let’s break it down:
Aunt Jennifer stitches tigers.
They’re fearless. She’s not.
They prance. She trembles.
They roar. She dies.
But they keep going.
“Aunt Jennifer’s tigers prance across a screen,
Bright topaz denizens of a world of green…”
The tigers are living their best embroidered life—bold, brilliant, and above fear. Meanwhile, Aunt Jennifer is somewhere in the background, dodging anxiety with every stitch.
“The massive weight of Uncle’s wedding band…”
Oh. That’s not a metaphor. That’s emotional gravity. Aunt Jennifer isn’t oppressed by a man. She’s oppressed by marriage as an institution, by the performance of femininity, by a gold ring that weighs more than her fingers can bear.
ABS Commentary & Symbolic Sass
“They do not fear the men beneath the tree…”
ABS adds: “Must be nice, having paws instead of patriarchy.”
“The massive weight of Uncle’s wedding band…”
ABS notes: “It’s not the karats. It’s the centuries.”
“When Aunt is dead, her terrified hands will lie
Still ringed with ordeals she was mastered by…”
ABS sighs: “Love fades. Oppression gets taxidermied.”
Why the Poem Still Scratches After All These Years
Because it captures something too many poems don’t:
The quiet suffocation of polite womanhood.
The generational silence wrapped in wedding lace.
The power of small rebellions stitched into permanence.
Aunt Jennifer doesn’t fight with fire. She fights with thread. And her tigers don’t blink.
ABS folds the scroll with measured grace, leaving behind a trail of paw prints embroidered in metaphor.
Signed,
ABS
The Literary Scholar
Where silken rebellion runs deeper than polished obedience
Where tigers leap through poetry, and Aunt Jennifer finally roars
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