Jill Moffett is a poet and essayist whose recent work has been published in Stirring: A Literary Collection, You are Here: The Journal of Creative Geography, and The Cortland Review. Jill holds a PhD in Gender Studies from the University of Iowa, and has taught Women’s Studies at Cornell College and Durham Technical Community College. She lives in Chapel Hill, North Carolina with her husband, their four kids, and three big dogs.
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Origins
Aunt Jennie knitted us hats and mitts
in garish colors out of cheap, itchy polyester yarn,
fibers made out of long chain polymers
derived from coal, air, water, and petroleum.
She sent them from Florida at Christmas,
by post to Northern Ontario.
They left welts on my forehead and wrists, but I wore them
out of a sense of duty, or perhaps
just gratitude that somebody far away loved me.