Grandmother in the Nursing Home and Afterplay
This article originally appeared in Southern Exposure Vol. 4 No. 4, "Generations: Women in the South." Find more from that issue here.
Grandmother in the Nursing Home
By Lee Robinson
They do not make these places
for the Grande Dame,
feisty widow
of the rose velveteen settee,
the bitch in you I love.
Your keepers knit and rock,
women who would suckle you
to death, they coo and rock.
I would read you a poem
but you do not remember me:
I, the thin girl who loved
the dusty covers ofyour Dickens,
the foreign odors
ofyour dark apartments,
your tragedies,
your small strong hands.
Afterplay
By Lee Robinson
Ah,
my body’s
serendipity,
the deep-from-the-bone
surprise: I,
alone on the red quilt now,
accept the dark’s
congratulatory hug
and bow
to the enormous ovation
of the billion cells.