Grandma read her doctor's orders aloud
over a fresh cigarette.
Hummed a nameless hymn
of white clouds
as she recited the litany
of prescribed don't do's:
  
heavy lighting,
bending over,
long periods of standing.
  
This is how you convince
your grandchildren to clean your house
on the first day of Christmas vacation.
  
Grandma's hands are too full
to hold brooms and dusters anyway.
They are too busy balancing prayers
born between the flickering knees
Of her dust orange lighter.
And her patron saint has four legs.
All of which can be found
tattooed across the chest
of a Marlboro carton.
  
Grandma is a religious woman.
So she prays religiously.
Says the body is a temple
and hers is an old testament book
of nicotine sacrifices.
A fiery copper skin
of crop circle veins.
Each wrinkle a story.
Each story ending in flames.
For 5 decades
she has been burning.
And I am too old
to pretend the ash is invisible.
Too young to watch it
cuddle the curves
of her lips
and call it anything
but sacrilege.


And this is why I need
to vacuum the rugs.