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Board Administrator Username: mjm Post Number: 4218 Registered: 11-1998 |
Honorable Mention Cactus Attic Graeme Mullen Grandma was a mean old junkyard dog, all crazed glass eyes spittle-webbed black gums and worn-out doormat fur When she died her house was full of dead, musty things: dated calendars, ceramic cats in shards, and a dozen roses in a battered closet, breathing cemetery potpourri in a jar soaking in formaldehyde, I swear was the first tumor they cut out of her, A dark little oyster of a thing, violet and purple, like a floating bruise Sorting through with my mother We found the cramped attic of cracked pots and fleshy cactus smells, and spiky plants in bent arrangement Particular, and alive And on the spines, pinned photographs of aunts and uncles and cousins, and the corner one that shocked me: A picture of my brother and me, very young, standing on either side of Grandma, in waxy raincoats, her jowls sagging in the cold air like soaked paper bags And, barely visible in the grey light, the prickle of raindrops falling onto a green umbrella that she held fast above our heads. |
