Grandmother put on airs;
patting kitchen-churned butter
into oiled molds to leave
pretty and pompous imprints
in rectangular blocks
a knife slide through easily
warmed by the old wood stove
that melted her face
the older she got.
They said she was dirt poor,
a pioneer, come up from nothing …
I cut around the pattern
letting it take its own time
to wilt into a mass
she would pour as oil
into her bread dough
I can still trace the feel
of it on the roof of my mouth.
Author notes
jpg = http://photodream.deviantart.com/art/Hiding-104203807
In a list
A contest entry
- TIme For A PIF Quickie! You Bored? by Sweet Impatience.
875 points, ended December 2, 2008, 9 entries
Gold trophy winner
• next poem in this contest, remove from contest
Please tell me what you think
Comments
1 - 8 of 8
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I have to agree with, Tomisb. This is very tactile and pulls a different time into view again.
Memories of my grandmother are quite different, but you drew them out. I don't remember a butter churn, but portulaca and bachelor buttons on the window sill, her teeth in a glass iced over on winter mornings...the old roses in the gray lineoleum... the book she so often held in her hands, as if it were made of gold.... her apron full of beans or peas from the garden as she sat on the front porch in the heat of a summer afternoon.
Most of all her hazel eyes smiling and musical laughter as she welcomed others into her tiny abode.
Thank you, Carol
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WOW!! I really really love this poem. you did an outstanding job with the prompt & your poem .. Most definitely went outside of the box with this write. the imagery is amazing to me. I can't even find the right words to begin to express the effect this had on me is beyond words..
good luck
kat
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Thank you so much. Sometimes, when I got bored, I traced all sorts of things.
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lovely
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wow...this is powerful.
I really like the imagery, this is amazing
good luck
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Thank you, CathrynAnn. I appreciate your comments.
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I can hold that last image and see how it matches the strength of my tactile memory. Wether it be the clutch of her fingers on the back of my neck to remind me to hold the door for my grandmother. The speed with which my mother would preform the ballet of making hollandaise over a full flame on the gas stove.
This piece is full of tactile discoverys and observations that seem rooted from the beginning of time. I am haunted by the revelations as they are discovered in each new line. "Kitchen churned butter" and I can see the churn and the space it takes as well as the room needed around it for a body to work the magic required to make butter. The molds and the glistening of the oil, the heat of a wood burning stove and the kitchen itself which my imagination brings to life. Wonderful magic here.
Love, Tom B.
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Wow, what a gr8 comment. I never thought of words creating images that take up space in images. I really learned soemthing from your comment, tomisb.
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