Grandmothers

(from Costa Rica)


I slump in the lookout, resting swollen feet
on a rattan seat. Baggies of ice are sweating
over my vanished ankles. The humidity
of hours at a pasteboard desk, or hereditary
tremors of my ever-enlarging heart?

Is it because I am thinking about grandmothers,
their habits and leftovers? Metaphorical stockings
rolled below my knees, agéd heels of memory propped
on a pouffe printed with gold cedars of Lebanon,
or a footstool draped with delicate Italian lace.

As my friend Jo Ann, a grandmother, slid into coma
at the flower mountain hospital—Montefiore—
she roared in her final sleep. Browned spotted arms
stretched tight, skin of an antique drum. But her feet,
uncovered—so fragile, arched like a martyred saint.

Angele Ellis’s latest book is Under the Kaufmann’s Clock (Six Gallery Press), a hybrid prose and poetry valentine to her adopted city, with photos by Rebecca Clever. She also is author of Spared (A Main Street Rag Editors’ Choice Chapbook), and Arab on Radar (Six Gallery), whose poems won her a fellowship from the PA Council on the Arts.