|
|
Grandma and Grandpa (Free verse) by jessicazee
I am sorry I never got
into The Golden Girls the way
you did but now I
totally understand why you liked it,
but did you relate more to Rose,
the silly Minnesotan
or Blanche, the slutty one? I knew
you were a seamstress, you
could make my jeans tight
around my teenage ankles, sew me
a scratchy robe, craft Advent calendars,
did you ever try to teach me
how to use a sewing machine?
Did you think I would not succeed,
alterations, strawberry pincushions,
thimble collections?
You had seven children,
one daughter toward the end
but a twin to a boy,
dinner came in cans, your husband,
my grandfather, the father of my dad,
a good joke-teller, a snorer, dead
at 52 in Oshkosh at a convention
you could not attend, you still
had two teenagers. We found
hundreds of romance novels
under your bed after you died,
Harlequins in dusty boxes.
I was not even born yet
but I know him, your husband,
in my dad, his laugh,
a fishing trip in Canada
they took, just father and son,
my dad keeps a photograph
of that weekend, him and his dad
in a canoe at the Boundary Waters,
life vests tightly tied around their bodies.
Back to poem details
|