ISSN: 1941-4137
POETRY THAT ENACTS THE ARTISTIC AND CREATIVE PURITY OF GLASS
POETRY THAT ENACTS THE ARTISTIC AND CREATIVE PURITY OF GLASS
Andy Powell is a Teaching Artist for DreamYard in the Bronx. He has writing out or forthcoming with Winter Tangerine Review, Peach Mag, Crab Fat Magazine, The Paris Review, elsewhere, is a reader for Adroit Journal, and is a 2018 fellow to The Poetry Foundation & Crescendo Literary’s Poetry Incubator.
Legion of Mary
(i)
to know there will be more spoils,
to plan on a windfall of marys,
a racket of goodness
and neatness
to do the work for you
when you’re finished with this earth
is where my grandmother began.
Mary Anne was always supposed
to be a first, and she was, Mary
Ellen on her tail. Is to know
there will be more holy bodies
to grip the steering wheel or rosary
like it is a hand of a man
pulled back into the boat, to be
a boat on land without much worry
of leaking, or to be the hand
gripped too with too much gusto?
(ii)
Nana has held a marble
in her mouth for the decade
she has outlasted grandpa.
This is not to say she hasn’t
cursed out Bogaerts and Pedroia
for lackluster hustle on the field
from her nursing home bed
or known that her daughters
were going to take her car away
and spent an afternoon revving
her Corolla into outer space,
making a final orbit of the parking
lot, but she had picked out
her funeral dress within months
of grandpa’s passing, holds
a steady truth on her tongue
that he will be there smoking
a cigarette outside the diner
or sitting on his pilled blue recliner
reading biographies of Ulysses
S. Grant. Maybe it’s her sweettooth
that lets her believe her old
sweetheart will again be waiting
for her at the bus stop, will be
sweet, was sweet, and he was,
and he wasn’t. She is not one
to take chances: there were
always boxes of honey buns
and pecan swirls stocked in her
oven, then in the top drawer when
she moved to the nursing home.
By now her bones must be made
of refined sugar, her arteries church
linen, her teeth a rosary of cavities
long unlaced, scattered in landfills.
My nana is a member of the literal Legion of Mary, and I started thinking about how she had essentially manifested her own legion of Marys by way of her daughters, and what all that means. While I didn’t end up being named Mary, I did acquire my nana’s sweet tooth. I, too, love a honey bun, a pecan swirl, a scone with clotted cream and jam.
Glass: A Journal of Poetry is published monthly by Glass Poetry Press.
All contents © the author.
All contents © the author.
