Wednesday, October 22, 2014

What a character

When I wake up, my grandson begins to draw a picture of my head. 
He says, “Your hair is stumbling all around” and, feeling pity, adds, 
“That’s ok, everybody makes mistakes.” 
My husband the musician attends our grandson’s choral concert 
and says, “I want you to learn to play an instrument,” and my grandson answers, 
“I have an instrument already. It’s my mouth. I sing.” 
Last week we saw the slimy track of a snail across the rug 
and my grandson says, “We have a pet snail now, don’t we?”  
He climbs out of the car at school and says, “My teacher told me 
she has eyes in the back of her head, but I think she’s just kidding, don’t you?” 
My grandson pretends to be Iron Man but drops his shield and hammer
to kiss a bolweevel.  At dinner my grandson asks, “What is romantic love?” 
I tell him, “It’s love that grownups can feel for each other,” 
and he says, “But I have romantic love for you.”  
My grandson sees a moth in his room and wants to know, 
“Will it eat my underpants?” 
Moths prefer cotton, I explain, and he shrieks, 
“My underpants are safe because they’re polytheist!” 
He tells me, “You are the cutest member of our family” and I reply, 
“No, you are the cutest” and then he frowns and tells me, “You should 
respect yourself more.” I leave the Birth of a Planet playing on TV 
while I use the bathroom. Thinking it’s the news, my grandson pounds 
with loud force on the bathroom door. “Quick! Quick! Come out! The earth
is being bombed by giant rocks!” He reads my poems and asks, “How come 
your poems never rhyme?” We walk by the lake with his friend. I listen to them 
talk about destroying ships and catching crocodiles and ask, 
“What do little girls your age talk about?” and my grandson answers, 
“I don’t know, we don’t listen to what girls say.”  
The hairdresser tells him, “You’re such a goodlooking guy. I bet you hear 
that a lot.” My grandson nods, “Yup, but I can handle it.”  

Sunday, October 19, 2014

From the top

I read the email twice and twice again.
I read again and two more times then once again.
They found the cancer on her tongue and in her lung.
She makes a joke that she won’t croak. I have to stop.
I read her email two more times right from the top.

I read her email two more times right form the top.
She makes a joke that she won’t croak. I have to stop.
They found the cancer on her tongue and in her lung.
I read again and two more times then once again.

I read the email twice and twice again.

Thursday, October 16, 2014

Cancer

Every day she reckons sugar, gluten--she’s so careful.
Every night she mixes seeds and petals, blends
the blood of pomegranates--the taste is sour.
Every noon she comes down on her knees 
and palms and 33 bones of spine--
from skull to coccyx--curl then straighten 
like a ladder up into lastingness--
life loves her body, 
ferments in her seeds, her tailbone, 
her sour juice. 
And would have grown day by day, 
sip by sip, 
downward-face by downward face 
had not the virus, 
that dead and living stalker, 
enraged every spore of her diligently examined 
breast.