VINYL POETRY

Volume 9, November 2013

BIRDIE
Cynthia Marie HoffmanView Contributor’s Note

[At the Magnolia Place boarding home, my grandmother]

At the Magnolia Place boarding home, my grandmother is wheeled into the living room and joins a circle of women staring at the oriental rug. I have seen a picture of my grandmother’s brain. A frozen lake breaking apart at the end of winter, a garden pillaged of its bulbs. When I was a child, we found a mother cat circling a trail of kittens outside my grandmother’s garage. My grandmother stood on the porch, pocking the grass rug with her high heels. An ashen snowfall flicked to the bushes below. It is quiet in the living room. Someone has cut my grandmother’s hair short and jagged with scissors. Nearby, someone is mopping beneath the kitchen table. When I was a child, there was a row of evergreen trees along the driveway to her house. Each time we left her, we waved and waved from the car. Her slim figure flashed between the trees until the gravel gave way to road, and we could not see her anymore.