Nana

poetry

Photo by MAK on Unsplash

Nana

Nana was 92 
when she made the move
to live with my parents

Nana was proud of two things
her baby boy and all her teeth

Nana liked to watch her TV 
didn’t mind it was stuck
on Touched by an Angel

Technology and her hubby took 
the remote on a one-way trip for 
diapers and batteries years ago

Come evening she’d hear her lover call
She claimed his name was Marlon
His cries of Stella Stella crept closer 
with each night passing into morning

Mama didn’t like to cook
but would make her a grand 
Southern dinner she learned 
from her mother’s mother’s

Batter and mush, flour and eggs
hush puppies hush, okra and chicken
greens snapped and simmering
fatback and onions, buttermilk 
cornbread in a skillet

Fifteen minutes after eating 
she’s back in the kitchen 
I have all my teethies
Why won’t you feed me?
  
With one hand Daddy 
stopped Mama from
casting the iron at Nana 
while holding his whiskey
neat and steady in the other

So when her chair 
stayed empty long after 
the shouts and bells
stopped shaking
Mama removed her apron

Wide open the window
sweetest the breeze in summer
the palest of blues, the curtain 

not moving, a car door shuts
an engine starts, an angel
pirouettes on the wall