Fuck Yeah, Poetry!

aprettywar:

There’s Something Different

Suzanne Highland

In the way your knees are folded when you sit,
face like a Civil War silhouette, wordlessly crossing
yourself. Our grandmother clock chimes so frequently

we forget to hear it; it’s a replica from Savannah
anyway, because my own grandmother only left me
a postcard with Coca-Cola stains and a dictionary,

and once she told a cousin that she couldn’t always
remember my name. I should be less surprised, but you’re
like she was. Marigolds like rifles, saving handwritten

notes in old lunchboxes, and something about the
fatalistic romance of another time. We are
seduced so easily into creating a family. The

photos don’t move – husbands as brown soldiers,
sisters as babies, but sometimes people die, sometimes,
yet you quiet me like you always have, with

one still finger. So tell me the old story again and I will
kneel next to you, hands lotioned, praying. Tell me the
old story and I will make you a queen in mine.