What Grieving Was

By Lynn Emanuel

That was not the summer of aspic

and cold veal. It was so hot

the car seat stung my thighs

and the rearview mirror swam

with mirage. In the back seat

the leather grip was noosed by twine.

We were not poor but we had

the troubles of the poor.

She who had been that soft snore

beside the Nytol, open-mouthed,

was gone, somewhere, somewhere

there was a bay, there was a boat,

there was a scold in mother’s mouth.

What I remember best

is the way everything came and went

in the window of my brief attention.

At the wake I was beguiled

by the chromium yellow lemon pies.

The grandfather clock’s pendant

of unaffordable gold told the quarter hour.

The hearse rolled forward over the O’s

of its own surprise.

Copyright Credit: Lynn Emanuel, “What Grieving Was” from The Dig. Copyright © 1984, 1992, 1995 by Lynn Emanuel. Reprinted with the permission of the author and the University of Illinois Press.

Source: The Dig (University of Illinois Press, 1992)