In the mornings they wake her, mumbling on the crack of dawn
Lists: things to do, things of yesterday to fix,
things to remember, things not to do.
Tidy up your hair, make sure your wear clean
clothes and take new ideas to talk to the neighbors
about as you stroll like you know why you left
the house. Do not forget to trace your steps, exactly,
back. Do not take an umbrella unless it rains.
Voices in walls verify that she had a yesterday:
Apologize for being antagonistic about Old Age Homes,
retrieve the old love letters from the outside bin,
tell the cat that he can come home. Repair it!
Don’t forget to get sugar cubes for night’s steeped tea
so you can think more sweetly about still being here
and damned lucky for it. Your name. Your date of birth.
While you are at it get rid of the notes
you left each of your immediate inheritors
about being cut off because they never talk any more.
In afternoon nap, they whisper to her, wake her, almost enough
to know it is only wall-wishes. Her mother calls her for dinner.
Her father comes swaggering in with his bib overalls
covered with straw man’s attachments and spreads
a yarn all through the house about the “damndest
thing he ever saw.” She hears her children, shrieking
in their little mouse voices about the unfairness
of being the youngest, the littlest, about someone
being the meanest mother in the world and the teakettle
swearing dry epithets about being turned off.
In the evening, they whine about having to go to bed
without their supper and her mouth tucks in bitter retorts
a hundred words long. Her sister, decked out in funeral clothes,
laughs and reminds her how unlucky it is to be left behind,
again, as always, while others are having a “Welcome Home”
party and everyone is there but her. God always loved her
best and he was passing out Old Age Pension bonuses
for the lucky few that remembered where the gate was.
At night, oh, lord, at night, skittering about in the walls,
little pink mouths kneaded her wrinkled breasts
and said nothing. Nothing. Just suck-and-satisfied
smiles of having had her when words were not necessary.
Little pink babies with little knobby wings laughing
in the garden, digging up bones and stacking talking heads,
like insulation, in the crevices behind pressboard and clapboard.
In a list
A contest entry
- ~ Talking Walls ~ by Melodies.
450 points, ended January 28, 2007, 16 entries
Silver trophy winner
• next poem in this contest, remove from contest
Please tell me what you think
Comments
1 - 7 of 7
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This is a brilliant poem... truly...
and much appreciated by me, as I have seen such sights as you describe, and know the heart and mind that wrote this astonishing poem must be gifted.
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Not gifted, pen fiend, but have lived a full life that has touched me.
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Carol . . . such a detailed portrait, such a wonderful journey into the mind and the heart of another human be-ing. You capture even the minutest fibres of existence and make them crystal clear for the reader . . . once again I am in awe of your delicate storytelling.
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thank you, marc. My mother's mother, was such an interesting agin to me. Then, I watched my mother begin to dress herself twice and wait for people who were nto coming. There was such beauty in its sadness, truly.
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Hey girl! This is a fabulous piece of aging remembrance. Of the life led the life imagined and the life dreamt. So beautiful in it's thoroughness and multitude of images that are brought to the mind of the reader. I'd give a more in depth comment but my hubby is yelling for boxers LMAO!!
~Samantha
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Simply Excellent
Oh..the voices that seemed so alive while reading this. This is brilliant, and I loved every line. And just when I didn't think it could get any better; in came the last stanza. Wonderful work, a winner in my book.
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Perhaps what frightens most is, although this was abotu my adoptive grandmother, my own birth mother is thinking she has won a car on Price is Right and someone has borrowed it and not broguht it back. it is such a frightening smile that brings....knowing me though, I will be cussing out people and giving kdis heck and stewing over late dinners.
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