Reading an article yesterday about writing workshops, I understood the author's funny take on the experience-- listening to melodramatic poems, sappy love poems, the flood of dead grandmother poems-- but I also have a dead grandmother, 2 in fact; and I've only ever written poems or songs about one of them. So here, with a wink and maybe a pinch, is my dead Grandmother poem. A couple more may follow, later, to catch up as usual.
------------------
Our Name
is the same, at end
though you didn't want to share
your life or family
you called my mother
"that French girl," epithet or
justification
you kept the plastic
on your couch for our visits
then wiped the dirt off
my eleventh year
your son died, having left us
a car, not much else
some cold spring morning
visiting my father's grave
they said you'd moved it
we couldn't have him
clean and free, of alcohol
or you, live or dead
i heard you had passed
by chance, and by chance I heard
i had an aunt, too
in church, years before
my grandfather came to us
shook my hand and left
my father gave us
each a quarter for ice cream
when it cost a buck
his last, hard visit
we sat politely, strangers
painting in eight years
never met that aunt
who saw me as a baby
then wrote off the child
we share a last name
we share being called Polack
and our wide cheekbones
i have a family
they came from Alsace, Lorraine
and made that French girl
after passing through
Montreal, Quebec, to make
my grandmother first
Estelle, or Stella
(she preferred that) my Gram
Acquard, then Hummel
baker of cookies
white-haired, tiny, barrel-shaped
from making children
she lived out decades
in her room. and the kitchen
drinking tea for thought
my seventeenth year
i found Stella; icy, still
her face drawn in pain
i told my mother
over the phone, to sit down
bad news was coming
a rainy morning
three weeks after my cat died
we put her in earth
the same green corner
that now holds my sister Lynne
but not our father
Gram never spoke ill
towards men who'd abandoned her
or you, and your kin
who had rejected
her own daughter as unfit
through plain bigotry
husband and son gone
she stayed through my early life
passed down a silk scarf
red, from a wedding
of some recent descendants
from old Villefleur
our baking Grandma
that sewed us homemade dresses
and washed our dishes
teaching openness
explaining the miracles
measuring spices
your grave, i don't know
you passed just one thing to us
and that, grudgingly
i am Kozlowski
by virtue of tired law and
regrettable sperm
-------------------------------
4/25/2012
by MK
------------------
Our Name
is the same, at end
though you didn't want to share
your life or family
you called my mother
"that French girl," epithet or
justification
you kept the plastic
on your couch for our visits
then wiped the dirt off
my eleventh year
your son died, having left us
a car, not much else
some cold spring morning
visiting my father's grave
they said you'd moved it
we couldn't have him
clean and free, of alcohol
or you, live or dead
i heard you had passed
by chance, and by chance I heard
i had an aunt, too
in church, years before
my grandfather came to us
shook my hand and left
my father gave us
each a quarter for ice cream
when it cost a buck
his last, hard visit
we sat politely, strangers
painting in eight years
never met that aunt
who saw me as a baby
then wrote off the child
we share a last name
we share being called Polack
and our wide cheekbones
i have a family
they came from Alsace, Lorraine
and made that French girl
after passing through
Montreal, Quebec, to make
my grandmother first
Estelle, or Stella
(she preferred that) my Gram
Acquard, then Hummel
baker of cookies
white-haired, tiny, barrel-shaped
from making children
she lived out decades
in her room. and the kitchen
drinking tea for thought
my seventeenth year
i found Stella; icy, still
her face drawn in pain
i told my mother
over the phone, to sit down
bad news was coming
a rainy morning
three weeks after my cat died
we put her in earth
the same green corner
that now holds my sister Lynne
but not our father
Gram never spoke ill
towards men who'd abandoned her
or you, and your kin
who had rejected
her own daughter as unfit
through plain bigotry
husband and son gone
she stayed through my early life
passed down a silk scarf
red, from a wedding
of some recent descendants
from old Villefleur
our baking Grandma
that sewed us homemade dresses
and washed our dishes
teaching openness
explaining the miracles
measuring spices
your grave, i don't know
you passed just one thing to us
and that, grudgingly
i am Kozlowski
by virtue of tired law and
regrettable sperm
-------------------------------
4/25/2012
by MK
2 comments:
Wow, this is epic on so many levels -- I never even noticed it was all haiku until the second read through ... effortless technique here! The old-world-ness here suffuses every stanza, and the claustrophobia of family weighs heavily like a shroud over the whole ... love the baking grandma section in particular, and the French parts, and well, can I say 'wow' and 'epic' again ?
You're too kind! But I'm stoked that I slipped all the haiku in that way-- I didn't intend it, they just naturally started forming and then it was easy. I tend to think in haiku...
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