Up in Grandma’s Room

Saint Anthony is down
on all fours, poking under the bed
in search of the miraculous medal
my grandmother lost.
He’ll find it, too. Saint
Teresa watches from her ceiling
corner, breathless that her breasts
have suddenly blossomed roses.
The odor of the incense pyramid burning
in its metal dish follows me
everywhere, rubbing against my legs,
the legs of chairs, like a cat in heat,
the invisible cat my father won’t let me get.
From the mahogany box in the corner
Gene Autry yodels "Don’t Fence Me In."
There’s land, lots of land
where the starry skies are bright
in that little wooden box!
We are happy to let Gene’s genial voice
roam around the room, even though
on the other side of the record
he’s toting his old .44. A hankie
cut from her vast old silken undies
hangs from my grandmother’s waist
by a pin. The thought of blowing my nose
in it gives me funny feelings, like
wearing my underwear over my pants.
But when grandma strokes my hair
and lifts the hankie in the air, I close
my eyes and honk. Today we are
painting the woodwork of her room
some other-worldly green, slap, slap.
It’s like green milk with green bubbles
on my brush. Upstairs here nobody yells
at me that I’m doing it wrong. Maybe
if I am really good my grandmother
will let me look down the front
of her dress again, the way I did
in the living room when I asked her
if I could. After we finish painting
it’s time for the magic bottle of ink:
ask a question, tip the bottle,
the answer floats to the bottom
out of the ghostly black . . .
Yes,
No,
Perhaps,
and my favorite:
The answer may not
be given to you at this time.
Sometimes when my grandmother reads
the Home Medical Encyclopedia
to see what diseases we might have
or holds the rosary in a way
that makes her mouth and fingers move,
I try to find the panel
behind her closet door
where a secret passage leads up to
the attic, or so I think. (I still dream
some nights of climbing it.) Then
I like to look inside her
books, especially the one where
naked women appear. They all have
flapper hair, penciled eyebrows.
Their breasts are smaller than my grandmother’s,
but none of the drawings show me
the secret of Down Below. That
is the secret I want to know!
All they disclose below the waist
are colored pipes and tubes,
like under the sink.
I know from bathing suits that women
do not look like this, Grandma.
Me-ma, I called you in my baby days.
What shall we do today, sweet face
still alive beneath the earth of my childhood?

My Father’s Watch

In the late summer rage
that strikes me every year, when
I try to throw out everything
useless in my life, getting
ready for school again, I came
upon your watch, a gaudy
Bulova thing with expansion
band and gold trim. You
never wore a watch
that I remember, certainly
not this one. Maybe you
wore it in the War.
I found it in a plastic bag,
like the kind the police use
to keep crime-scene evidence.
The crime scene of your life
where time meant nothing
meant you were free to gamble
your money away and run
around town in your big red
Dodge pickup; aptly named, that Dodge.
Nobody ever knew where
you were, least of all time—
until it began to run out
and pinned you to your sickbed,
having its way with you at last,
and you down for the count.
I see your thick wrist now
as I slip the watch on my
more delicate wrist, honed
by years of piano-playing,
a lifetime of doing nothing
more strenuous than moving
a pen across a notebook page.
I have to slide your watch way up
on my arm to make it stay
without jangling like a
bracelet some girl would
wear, or some souvenir watch.
I suppose you thought
that I was such a girl.
The watch doesn’t work, of
course—it can’t be wound.
The stem is only good for
moving the hands around
anywhere, to any time, to
no time at all. Maybe it got
in the way of your mechanic’s
work, though you could have
slipped it on later, if there
was a later to come home to.
But you came home always later
than sooner, when there was
no time for me, maybe even
no time for my mother. I’d be asleep.
I might as well have been
this watch you put aside, the watch
that I’ll never throw out because
inscribed on the back it says:

Marge

How to have held you then
and now to have learned
that the tree of your spine
cankered from within
What if I had never
let you go, had kept
my hand around
your small waist
Marge, would you
have fallen?
Your eyes of the Meadowlands
Bearing before you
the conspicuous breasts
that all New Jersey wanted
to get its crummy hands on
that you would never let me
touch and had to be removed
Then I wanted to hold
more willing waists than yours
against me, then I wanted
trees that opened to my touch
not sweet promises but
the smell of sweet sap
stinging my hands, my lips
Out of sleep I woke
to write this, back
to sleep I now return
again to dream of you
pressed against my hand
in memory where, young
again, I lean my head
against your breasts
to touch my lips where
you still grow upright
from the earth
alive and tall
into eternity

Any Morning

When I do wake up
and feel my body once again
collect itself around me,
I can’t help but throw
my arms around myself
in an embrace, happy
for another chance
in the light.