Ode to My Great-Grandmother Always one thing, always another, heat deep in my belly white beads tossed in the air and falling then looping around a young girl’s throat, and the throat calls out in triumph or the girl calls out and the throat is the instrument or the girl and the throat are both instruments and the beads are the instrument and the hand that threw the beads is the instrument and the sound that arcs over the heads of the crowd is the sound, and all look up, and all look up and see nothing, and all look up, and laugh. Heat deep in my belly, I am radiant, I am radiant, I am white and amber and gold. I cannot remember anymore the first days or I remember only when I am asked for no reason I can tell and the days were so long ago and in the beginning it was cold, and my husband’s arm on my arm was cold I knew then I told them the snow on the wool of his overcoat and my fingers were cold thick as broom handles. I left my gloves at home. In the kitchen when he came to me. I was trying to remember the recipe for. My gloves I laid on the table the oak for a moment or. I took them upstairs after I put on the apron with the clusters of grapes that he bought for my birthday from the children wrapped in tissue and green ribbon. And the flowers the first time he brought flowers from the shop and I knew I understood the secret he was telling me. When he laid them in my arms. The stems still moist and dripping. The roses and yellow the petals my lips the thorns wrapped in paper and green ribbon. Österreich. Not red, not gold. I left school when I turned fourteen. 1888 makes seven, which was my half-life and half the half-life and one more than the number of my children. And one less than my brothers and sisters, and three less than my brothers my sisters my mother my father was still living fifty-one years later and watched and believed and said nothing. Not in English, not in German. Seven twice is the year I left school and one less than the years of my marriage. The night before I was Olschläger, upright and young and proud. A string of pearls from a long box dusky laid in velveteen the tight creak of the hinges his blue eyes through the filigreed clasp. Concord concord concords for what sort in the morning or the morning before. The grapes from the yard and the heat and my teeth through the skin and the silk of the flesh on my tongue on his tongue the heat my hem my hip then the cedar the fissure his skin and muslin I am Fischer exhalation a sigh I am the mint grown high the lavender outside every blade of grass moving and moving and moving I am my back and my belly my feet bare and cool I am my fingers my fingers in his hair in my hair
Posted on: Sun, 09 Nov 2014 18:34:45 +0000
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