Aunt Sallie's Lament

Aunt Sallie’s Lament is a poem by Margaret Kaufman about a woman named Aunt Sallie who fell in love with a patent medicine man at age twenty-two. When he leaves town, she loses the taste for her own way of life, lamenting what could have been. His memory was “like chalk on the back of my mind.” She claims her “heart was wound into her quilts, more tears than stitches in them…” Quilts have a rich history of communicating through pattern, color and form. Family lineages, commemorations and as several historians argue, even escape routes of the Underground Railroad have purportedly been sewn into quilts. The form of this book is a diamond quilt pattern which changes as one turns the pages. Cut-out sections reveal patterns beneath. The story progresses in two parts: the main story line and a side poem, which emerges on the left facing page to read: Oh Lord, Yes. Fool of a woman. Yes, indeed. Ahh. Yes, indeed. My foot. Yes. Fool of a woman. Oh Lord.