Where seasonal root veg soup Warmly journeyed our throats Granny Jean, skin translucent as glass, Sheer, showing tendril veins beneath Crinkled cliff-edge lips at Jenny's budding womanhood She knew hers lay as barren As insignificant as the pale Mojave borderlands.
Brazen-cheeked dolls and pastel bears Audienced my transition from slip to sundress Back in the lucid haze of the pensioner's kitchen Where dust particles hived like antique film grain Sat Jenny; painted lips like crisp apple skin Freckled cheeks hollowing atop Her milkshake's flimsy plastic straw
Raspy, bubbly ***** filled The kitchen; appliances groped By the pious smite of the sun The kind of light they say never to walk towards Then, a weathered cough and the stiff moan of a rocking chair Just to jest fate Was none of our business yet; I was taken by the hand
We pass many exhibits On the austere lilac fridge: "Mr. & Mrs Richard D. Barclay, wed on 11th of Oct 1961" And crayoned from her own hand, aged 10; "Me and Granny B" A waxy glyph on lemon sugar-paper not always in memoriam But among the moth-wing wallpaper lilies For now
Dust dunes like mattress ghosts Collect in mushroom clouds above Jenny's sudden weight While I feed myself to the mirror My frock, flesh, hair all seep Into the totalitarian whiteness of our room And I am happy if this is my course through life I know I'm no one
I try on, as I shake goodbye, Jean's hands; fire-crafted leather baseball gloves They do not fit just yet but When my hands no longer sheen in the virtuous sun When I feel citrus hand soap grate into each wrinkled chasm I promise you, gran, I will remember Even the Mojave desert will see rainfall.