Anemic
by Bridget Hawkins
somedays I wake to myself
worrying
at the sore
that is her
Irene
the grandmom I never knew
the thirty blocks
between rent check and paycheck
the bottle of sherry
in the back cabinet
the demands breathed
down the front
of a work shirt
they eyed
the curves
of her
when they
sopped up the sweat
of her brow
to sell
another thirty thousand cans
of campbell’s soup
the american dream,
whatever little
night-nothing that
meant
to a black girl.
unmoored
I wake myself
and I’m worried
I could have
will have
forgotten
a face smoothed
into my own,
by morning, I’ve
know faces fewer
than I’ve known
gravestones,
prayer cards
and caskets
for the generations,
all the bad habits
she didn’t get
to teach me:
menthol smokes
bad boyfriends
overworn shoes
chemical burns
needing to
just hope
that wound will be better
in the morning
until it kills you
I lowered her
into the ground
somewhere in Camden
how to divert
the backhanded stares
at churchsteps
sitters’ overcrowded stoops
your sister’s house
wallpapered over
luxuriating
in the fact
she has a man
black women
aren’t supposed to be
solitary
to smell like
last night’s
chicken and dumplings
milk, blood
or anything
grandmom
was not a stereotype
she read
horror novels and mysteries
did her son’s math homework
beat everyone
at trivial pursuit
she stole
her last name
because she felt
she was punching up
she never cheered
my father’s football games
but she always came
grandmom
didn’t have time
to be political
she was a politics
running for the bus stop
carrying groceries
a mile
when the taxi
didn’t show
flipping through channels
and whipping her boys
into wrangling a laundry machine
cutting grass
so no one could ever call them
sloppy niggers
again
she says to me
when i speak,
carrying her
nose, fingers, lips, and breasts
carrying her
alcoholic memory
carrying and
carrying on,
that no
white tongue
will ever
transmute her
into a regret