misses virginia's chestnut couch

an ode to my grandmother

i threw up on grandma’s chestnut couch.

cut slices of franks & beans crawling out as oozing mess 

cartoons run window to window in the living room. 

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beams of oak, and eggs with yolk, 

it’s only me, comfy as a bee, on grandma’s chestnut couch. 

now there’s acid reflux on her furniture, 

and grandma’s twisted in bed as a turnip, 

must wake her up to clean the syrup that spilled across her chestnut couch. 

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threw the hallway i go, little feet with paints of snow, 

cross the kitchen, passed the sparkle of red and rooster design,

a broken toaster, and an ambitious radio so grandma can hear the negro spirituals from the habitants of her chestnut couch. 

mmmmmmmmm. mmmmmm.

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a coaster of willow, and bony beige table

covered in virginian chocolate-chipped muffins, fingernails buried in dessert

i pass the food zone into the place misses grandma caresses her z’s,

a place for sun down once she’s left her chestnut couch. 

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open the door—eeeeeeeeek, and the tv glows a despair, 

grandma is half awake but always alive in love, 

i tip-toe into her arms, her heart is the radiator,

her heart keeps the house warm,

her heart makes the french toast melt and the sweet potato ripe,

& the fear fade, & the day sing on a november night.

she holds me close, i’m her tiny dancer,

just a sweet laugh, i bring black thievery beans to her hair. 

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shoved my fingers down my mouth,

that’s how i knew the food rode down there, 

grandma puts me in her sea and ocean blue dungarees, 

and promises me in death she’ll hold me when i’m scared. 

a little naked bee with a mole on the bum, slip off slip on

fresh cotton and denim, a five-year-old cowgirl, 

we won’t worry about the mess that awaits,

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the black and white screen will cascade it’s dreary gray, 

everyone’s always singing in the rain, 

drowning in a storm,

and grandma’s polka-dot nose gives me a tickle across the dome,

 and i hold her close trying to always remember when she was home. 

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big cousins call me grandma, it is a favorite nickname.

what is joy if not to know that her eyes are my duplexes (even when they begin to shrink with wrinkle)

her hands are my hands (even when they grow roadway lines of veins) (even even if she was a better cook than me)

her wisdom is my tomorrow (if i’m blessed to see sun pass over our virginian farm). thank you grandma—misses virginia, your sweet alibi and sabbath promise,

you mist in the air, thank you for your wind,

and cleaning up my kindergarten off your chestnut couch.

j.