Bourgeon

What’s Left of My Grandmother’s Signature

In her room at Poet’s Walk
her first name begins with
a cursive J elegantly
completing itself on the wall,

resting in suspended animation
southwest of an equally impressive
o that I’d be proud of except
that it decides to exit
stage left instead,

which loops down
into the second mistake;
a loosely connected capital A
followed by the third
in a four letter name,
an l instead of the n.

Beginning Anderson
she abandons script,
another capital A
shuffling its feet nervously
just before the chasm
breaking her concentration
yet again,

the n shrinking,
and the d passed over
entirely for the e, tilted
and staring into oblivion,
and whatever else I remember.

My Grandparents’ House

Grandma and Grandpa’s house is immortal,
or at least the love of two who knew
we could do no wrong—

you were perfect in their eyes,
and so was I.

Now the familiar house belongs to others.
I fantasize that they too have grandchildren
visiting from down south, that the room
next to the kitchen is still cold on summer mornings
where an eager grandson is watching deer
while his grandmother watches him.

She asks him what he wants for dinner
and the response of chicken nuggets
jars me back to a nightmare of now—

I see their antipasto missing,
and no course after dinner.
No Sunday gravy is cooked
with the masterful touch
of just right.
Children are playing
on tablets instead of listening
to stories about their ancestors.

I’d still like to go back.
We could teach them
what home used to feel like.

Parallel

Alone with my poetry
in a busy food court,

several passing parents
judging my Bob Marley shirt
like it’s still 1970,
smugly unaware
their thoughtless disturbances
weren’t unnoticed.

The intermittent sunroofs
are a nice touch,
but a bit too human
in their judgmental equidistance
to resemble nature’s beauty.

 

Image by Jehjoyce at en.wikipedia [Public domain]

The Night I Hear Sharon Olds Read

Some rooms look dead from the outside.
I eat late. I drink so much. Cold moon over

an old drugstore in an April that feels like February.
I am hungry for other bodies, other air,

and out of metaphors for trying to understand
my life. When I hear an unfamiliar voice

I’ve known for years, I want to unravel in gratitude
for the poet who owns its sound—

for her ode to waking alone, her braids pulsing
with butterfly clips, her tongue wrapped hot around

the words, her questions unfurled like buds
in bloom. She makes me feel the warmth I forgot,

reminds me what it is to cry out
with pleasure in a crowded room.

 

Don’t Take Advice From Strangers

With thanks to Natalie Shapiro’s “Sunshower”

Some people say you can’t feel color.

They say touch doesn’t have a sound.

They say breathing is not

the same thing as listening,

that you can’t pull love, beating,

out of you, can’t hold it hot and throbbing

in your palms, can’t hurl it across a room,

can’t make it stop singing.

Some people say you can hear

a whisper from yards away

but only if you stand on a rock

placed equidistant from another rock

outside of a building that arcs

like a moving train.

Some people say the words

will not hurt when they hit you.

Hold still: Here is a blue to cut your teeth on,

a heaviness on the tongue,

a buzzing at your lips, a noise like silence,

a space like a body,

a murmur like bees inside your ears.

Image by Lessentropy – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=78265504