A Good, Long Steep

POETRY

by Mickie Kennedy

My grandmother simmered strawberry leaves
to soothe her arthritis.

A copper bracelet turned her wrist green.
She dipped snuff, High Society Peach,
and used her cast-iron skillet daily.
She cooked with lard, scooping

from a tub in the back of her fridge.
She spent hours outside
digging with a spoon, unearthing
the long, twisted roots of each dandelion.

Every car she ever bought was a Buick.
Every cracker was a Ritz.
Every dog, a confidant.

She hated waste, hated
ready-made microwave dinners
and whomp ’em biscuits in a tube.
She saved everything, even scraps

of wood we later carved into ducks.
She believed all things
should be beautiful, adding lashes
to each and every hand-painted eye.

Alzheimer’s Elegy

POETRY

by Mickie Kennedy

I dream that I’m turning the knob
on my grandmother’s TV
to fix the picture,

adjusting the aluminum foil balls
on the rabbit-ear antennas.
When I wake up, TV knobs

are gone. Antennas are gone.
My grandmother—gone.
A few weeks before she died,

she called and I almost didn’t
answer. She’d lost nearly all
of her memories, but that day

she was unusually present.
Her voice didn’t waver. She laughed
and it was like we were continuing

a long dead conversation.
It was like God herself
had tuned my grandmother back

into the woman she was,
giving her another chance
to gossip, to whisper, to call

everyone she knew
until she grew too tired
and quiet, her mind settling

back into static.

Hide and Seek

POETRY

by Mickie Kennedy

We ran the rows of corn, lost
in stalks twice our height. I always sank
to my knees to catch a glimpse of legs
flashing in the green.

The dirt was exposed, turning to mud
whenever it rained. Shoes caked,
so heavy we could barely lift our feet.
Calves coated with it, clothes streaked,
even our faces freckled with silt.

Sun low, mothers shouting our names,
we stripped down and hosed each other off—
the brown liquor of mud vanishing
into the grass, children
returning as children.