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Over the River and through the Woods My grandfather threw her out of a moving car on Route 4
after a Tracy-Hepburn movie. She said this as I sat on her lap,
giddy at the wheel of the blue Nova while she worked the pedals to K-mart.
**** All she wanted was a baby. She’d cradle me, watching
her soaps. I sucked her nicotine fingers until sleep took me.
She wanted a girl, dressed me in a red dress, ribbons in my hair,
and snapped Polaroids my brother dangled over my head for years.
**** She took in a pregnant runaway: free room and board, medical
bills, in exchange for your baby. The police steered the girl
to the squad car. She clamped the baby to her chest, inhaling
the smell of his scalp. Grandma sobbed as Bert and Ernie chirped away.
****
Grandma’s dying, says the answering Machine, Emphysema.
She wants you to write her eulogy. She showed me how to cut out snowflakes,
made the best bologna sandwiches, could skin a squirrel in ten seconds flat.
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