Grandma Shirley

Oh, I had almost forgotten about the praying porcelain angels lining the windowsills in the kitchen, keeping watch over the valley below, just like Grandma as she sits at her yellow formica table waiting for something to happen: a mailcar speeding up the hill to bring her medical bills and letters from Norway, a familiar tractor rumbling across the field with a trail of lowing cows behind it, her neighbor in the yellow house lowering his flag to half mast at noon.

We sit in the shadow of a lone lamp as a grey afternoon turns to damp evening. I smile at the "Uffda" banner hanging off a brick next to the unused fireplace. Fire strikes terror into my grandmother's heart, as does snow, rain, thunder, lightning, cows, floods, and diversity. I remember how she used to put her hand over each stove top burner to make sure it was completely off before we could leave to go out for lunch at the diner down the hill. She never used the stove.

Oh, the things that I've been going through! All summer, I've gone through photographs and photographs. All the old relatives and places from Norway. Of course, no one's interested in those anymore.

I'm interested, Grandma. I love that kind of stuff.

Oh, well, I've sent most of them to the people who are interested in them. People just aren't the same as they used to be. There's no dignity anymore. People shooting people over a toy the day after Thanksgiving. I remember Frederick and Nelson's--such dignity. Of course the store wouldn't open until nine, ten o'clock. Lines of people, all the way around the block. But always dignity. Of course, you wouldn't go shopping downtown without a hat, gloves, and heels. I always wore my heels when I shopped downtown.

I'd love to see your old shoes and hats, Grandma.

Oh, and the suits! Always wool, none of this... spandex nylon. And if it was cotton, it was 100% cotton. Of course, the colors were mostly black, green, ivory suits. Oh, I'd love to have a nice blue suit again!

I listen to her talk about the furs, the gloves, the $2.20 hat sales twice a year, the size triple B shoes, the elevator girls, the Wednesday fashion shows, the dignity. I can see her, a young, Norwegian platinum blonde, her fjord blue eyes striking against her fair skin. She glides upstairs on an escalator in her pointy heels and her brown hat with the pink roses lining the lip. When she arrives home, with two hat boxes and mink stole, her father shouts at her in Norwegian to shut the curtains and turn out the lights, the Nazis could be flying over Ballard tonight.

My reflection in the dark kitchen window brings me back to her frail arthritic hands and her swollen ankles. I take inventory: the quilted cozy over the toaster, the styrofoam container of pastry, the neglected copper teapot on a cold burner. And she is still there, the dancing porcelain girl in a poplin dress, holding her skirt daintily in one hand and a pink parasol in the other.

Angsty

I have to keep secrets.
This makes my skin itch and I feel
like I have a cloth heart

so, often
I force the seams at the arteries
with a ripper
with surprise
as the threads burst open

I'm sorry I let your secrets
out,
floating along bloodways
to stop and clot
in my tongue

I would tell you
they are safe in my body
I have good skin, seamless skin
and you'd believe me, OH, you would

But you see, I've just cut my tongue on the edge of the knife as I licked off the creme of the cake