GRIEF Poem: Grandma Lynn Speaks on Memory, Time, and Missing Things, by Juliet Bo-Hyeh Garon

R.
I sit in my bed in the topmost section of NYC. My mom puts a latke in oil below, sizzling it like a thousand mating cicadas. We light candles. My knees show a second too long and I put them away. Jane gets back with a buttload of books in a bag, the jacket of the team she handles tossed on clavicle like a white sheet on cold nose. No signs of exhale. Clothes smell of oil and I get back to the house, and the white attacks again, some angel sitting on the deck of the next house and the second next and the cement is full of stones that push galaxies into digit pads. I count each angel – 1 6 5 multiply 2 12 10. I know that now which is cool because I didn’t when I left with the sun and I won’t when Anden leaves to the side of the sea in which women don’t show a knee. We should have put a diamond on the issue, but the oil gets in each nook of the bibliothèque as he so helpfully tells me. Each classmate smells my Chanukah. I will meet His dad soon, and I hope He gets the time to visit. The sitting lady in the shadow says He will when His kid comes home post-college. That’s you, yeah? You came back?

O.
Anden is in a land that ends in “ia” and I sit at Hunter. They teach me the art – cucumbers are safe, cake is a danger. Jane’s daughters swear in striped bikinis, flirt, run, and bite at ankles. Mama is under a sheet at the lecture hall dais, a frying pan at the ready. I incubate. The heat is pressing, bursting the blister-urgent matter. Static crackling, and a plane has crashed again. AIR RAID THIS IS what it has been since they left, and chemistry calls hither, a wee-uh marker scritch and a circle and an “I” lying sideways. I reach up and grab the shelf by my bed, the cabinet bursting with red and white, the skirt wrapped tight hiding clink, clink, clink – the three nickels in my bag prepare themselves as chips, trading and getting a ticket, at the ready, Sacha wrestling Ken Davitian is truly a wild ride. Putzes swingin, they seem meshugana like the mints I give a granddaughter each time we light candles as a unit. I can’t believe they let this in a theatre. Wishing He was here in the seat with me, cracking sillies, making laughter, creamy and bright. Wishing He was visiting, sitting by my bed, buckling my backless dress, pulling tubes in my hand, rubbery dj deep in Carnegie Hall, making music. Still playing the strings, yeah? Please keep at it.

S.
My hand dormant on the piano key. I roll through a lifetime teaching piano hand after piano hand better than mine how to make more money than me. He will follow, riding the raging bull downtown. Nothing but pride there, but He can’t know that. He wouldn’t try anymore. I pull tube out of hand, put cottage on whole wheat, hold Pearl hand to evacuate, can’t on own and don’t know why. Why not Him and a hand without the nail paint of a whore and a face I don’t know when I clamp an eye. Tight lid, tighter image, rope tied around hand holding it down, rope around hip, around ilium. To be free on the TV, to be free like ball bouncing back and forth, too far for knowing. NOT A DRILL, the radio will chant. The end ending now, ending a day, ending what? Not knowing. Granddaughter too tall to marry – day will end alone. Not a drill. One chance to find a man worth Juliet Garon half of Him, one chance to make a career out of chemical line and cello and radio announcing. One chance to end that career and make a great-child, the top beautiful thing I ever did. He put me on the farm, where I once took a walk down to the apple tree that nothing fell far from and a bench popped up underneath. Bench moved when I got tired, bench out of Bronx apartment known well by my bone, bench marked by graffiti of punk kid, take me off of the bench. Can He come tomorrow and take me out, out like a light or a dog walker?

S.
The wall of my room felt different today – a trance falling gently into me time and time again, the golden green of the TV bouncing back and forth between men and an ocean. Nixon did a cameo on Laugh-In, too, according to the front and back page of my book. When will He come? Maybe next week? Maybe the day before today? Maybe when Jane will pick up the phone and finally decid to turn the rotary, make the effort of a pencil to not chip her nail, tell me about having a daughter and another one on the way. About the price to create two, a war in a bathtub, a jelly in a pan, a wiggle in and a worm out. He’ll come back, right? After the quarter. After the nickel thrown between a finger and a thumb (they’re different according to Jane Goodall, that tall hippie) and flip onto the edge of a palm and the wine given to a woman. I wonder when I can eat gefilte again with the fancy fork. Granddaughter coming next week according to Pearl. Pearl will put the cream on the bread wrong again. Tube in hand full of brown, angel come back, cement deep in thumb pad, deep in vein. Recline, recline, recline, and revel in a day of reclination, recognition, and reckoning. Do you get it?

ROSS!
He came today. He made it. Told me I’d see Jane soon. Wife said she’d protect him while I wasn’t there. Told me granddaughter was taking chemistry, grandson was playing classical music. He told me past tense is for idiots and they all think Borat is a riot. Told me Anden is waiting somewhere in Romania, and He is waiting somewhere in New York. Told me He’d be there soon. He told me He’d hold my hands. Played piano on the radio. Held my hands. Said I could talk to you and see how I felt.

I feel alright, honey. I feel just alright.