HOME | DD

Description
my mother stands
a tall wide person
perfecting the art of being short.
her hair is a nest,
snarls pulled and discarded,
the ever changing patterns wiped.

my grandmother
deals with abuse in secret ways
then tells me about it
thirty years too late.
she dabs at her lipstick,
folds the napkin and
creases it firmly.

my other grandmother lives alone
in a building of people,
wax, soap, and flesh.
she sleeps in a room filled
with the fantasies of a lonely wife,
the thoughts of a woman long gone.

my third grandmother
lives with another woman
and her family
has forgotten her.

my aunt crooked her back,
sometime in a summer unremembered.
it arches now, glistening
in her constant movement.
she holds herself tightly
and scrunches her eyes against
the rushing flow of anger.

i carry these women in the
folds of my palms,
in the slope of my neck.
i carry their idiosyncrasies,
their disagreements, dislikes,
their joy and love find places
in me to rest.
my face is stitched,
a moving compilation, a
warped scrapbook of time.
my heart, too;
a red ragged thing of
forgetfulness and lineage.