Granny, sitting in Sunday shade
of sitting room-turned-to-death-room,
waits for death with tongue like “fly swat
that still works just fine,” she’d have said
had life not sucked her bones dry
and her mind into a ponderous past.
She still curses like a fisherman’s wife;
sleeves of her bed jacket rolled up
over bony elbows and scarecrow hands
flailing air as spittle pronounces
next new sound. “Shut those kids
the fuck up!” grinds from between
her nubby teeth and string is plucked
on a bad harp that rings tinny
in startled silence that follows.
Gray waves bobbing on her crinkled brow,
she grumbles, gustily, about singsong sounds
of what she thinks are children playing in her backyard:
shrieking with excitement, mounted on stick horses,
racing around heaven’s cloud-softened trotting grounds
falling, wrapping arms around their own laughter.
She wouldn’t know an angel if she saw one, just now.
Grandchildren eye their parents and whisper
that granny is culling the worst cuss-words
she has saved for nondenominational rites
she always despised. She'll easily tell God off,
first chance she gets. We can’t take her
to church in this condition.
A contest entry
- Anything You Want: Free Verse by Nicole Hanna.
300 points, ended May 5, 2007, 18 entries
• next poem in this contest, remove from contest
Please tell me what you think
Comments
1 - 10 of 10
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Hahaha, Oh my G...
This is wicked funny! I just knew when I saw you were from Maine I'd see the humor.
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ty again dillpickle62...great to have met and spent some time kibbitzing.
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this is a wonderful poem
I think I have someone in my life who reminds me of this wonderful lady you have described here. It seemed no church could define my lady either. This is a wonderful story... thank you so much...PK
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Yes...I am thinkign they will ahve to dust me and send me out, quietly, into the forest...lol..I wouldn't do so well in church either.
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Brought such a smile this ending did...And I always though that to tell god of was an affirmation of something...and then one day I figuredoutthat is was taking to myself...and I let myself have it, I did...
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lol, yes, I figure I am as hard on me as anythign could be....so I gave up on the other voices...lol ty pen friend.
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In the first stanza, the quote is glorious, but I'd like to see "she'd have said" following it up- keep it more succinct to help the flow along (which is otherwise lovely in those lines). And boy did I get a chuckle out of the final lines. I've known many a grandparents who would shame truck drivers. The lines in that stanza again (l1-4) were wordy and bogged the stanza down a bit, but I just really enjoyed the conversational feel of it. Wonderful stuff. Anything mentioning religion has me at hello. lol
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ta duh!!!!!!
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I thought it was ta muh duh!
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lol, told ya...tee dee dee...lol.
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