Conversation With a Corpse

by Stacy M.S.

A poem about a Woman Contest Winner

Grandmother, you never told me
In my pre-kindergarten days,
On the ridge of Grassy Creek,
Where the trees dipped to meet
The horizon of that ram-shackled farmhouse,
The stories of 1915, how the boys
In the one-roomed schoolhouse
Would pull your hair, and tease,
How your father died,
Born full-blooded Cherokee,
And how the hills were spirited bodies.
Grandmother, you never warned me
the flightiness of dandelion petals,
How pulling the flower would maim the beauty,
How fast roses in a basket would wilt,
When I emptied the bushes
With my fat-wooden-weaved basket,
A July fourth centerpiece,
Turkey gravy drying to my right cheek,
Peanut butter kneading beneath your knuckles,
Back then you'd never bore the brunt of a stroke,
Limbs stiffening between the undergrowth of dead nerves.
Grandmother you never held me back,
condescending to the reverie of silly dreams,
When wanderlust glued itself to the soles of my feet
Like wet grass, or country under-brush, pine needles
Awaiting the prickle of some unborn alter-reality.
My meddling awaited the scattered mono-syllables
Of your fleeting memory, the broken glass,
The death of your sister in the prime of your life,
How fat used to wind itself like dead-weights
Around your ankles, till rheumatism stole your appetite,
And nine kids tolled your time into old age,
The winters without jackets, the rarity of frivolous things.
Grandmother, if only your wisdom
Could have been interchangeable,
Matter enough to keep a summer bloom
Amidst the storm-assault of one's bitter memories,
Or seal the becoming storm clouds
Beneath the golden lid of your old canning jars.
If only your midnight whispers,
The dying confessions of those hated years
Could have been filled in pill form,
A plastic-blue gel cap, perhaps,
I'd swallow it with my lunch limeade,
I'd reap the off-spring of some voodoo spell,
Karma crackling like a thunderclap
Over the swelled hills of our foreland,
And love, love would free us the blind lies,
Secrets nestled beneath a pillow, the purgatorial sin.

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A poem about a Woman
Contest Winner

This poem was written in memory of my grandmother, who passed on when I was only a young child. As an adult, so often when I needed advice or a listening ear I always find myself wondering what she would have said. This poem is, in a way, an honor of her life...in all it's tribulations, and in all it's glory.

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A woman's whole life is a history of the affections.

Conversation With a Corpse

by Stacy M.S.

A poem about a Woman Contest Winner

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