When I'm working on something I cut away all the fat & focus my energies on that something. I don't have the stamina to be writing prolific amounts of poems on wide ranges of concepts.
All that being said, I was in oregon last week... my first visit since burying my grandmother. & though the hybrid memoir I'm working on now (see: missoula.) doesn't involve her, I found myself jotting out a little missive on staying in her house now that she's gone:
sleeping in my grandmother’s house after she has died
she who
made bell shaped
cookies & stars
saturated
with sugar frosting
she who
made three types
of lasagna—
her daughters unable
to agree on a meat
now pauses
in a maple box
crucifix balanced
prone on the top
I steal her sweaters
though I can’t remember
when last I saw her
wear them
from my existence
positioned three thousand
miles away & across
a country
her absence seems
merely my neglect
in calling to say
hello
she made me a cake
the last time I saw her alive
in the freezer six months
I thaw it now
& eat it.
copyright 2013, natalie raymond.
