FANNY
FANNY AND ME
Her face was leathery+lined+dignified She’d always
seemed ancient to me Though my first memories from
about 3 place her squarely at my age now Ancient? Me?
Maybe Leathery skin Degenerated knee +discs
Grey creeping in
Memory seeping a yellowy liquid when worked too hard
Shards of glory days penetrate the purple haze But wait!
They may be NOW in this intermezzo this purgatorio
Before something wicked this way comes Ungentle +crouched
in cells
Fanny once said to me: Why are you embarrassed? Some people
live above stores We’d been talking about my father’s rusted out car
Tiny + black Crowded in the back With: sweating bleating brothers
I hid Especially from nouveau riche kids The boy with an Elvis ducktail
Well if everyone lived above stores I wouldn’t be embarrassed But
they don’t So I am In her mind’s eye an open palm slap to my
morphing face Soon to have her cheekbones My father Lee said she’d
never touched him as a child Stoic woman missed her mother who
died at thirty three Sent her to the Mayo Clinic but couldn’t save her
Ovarian treachery
__
..how when people suffer just so much they get mean and ugly
and something dies in them..
(The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter Carson Mcullers 23)
Fall 2017
songanddancegirl 