-wait a minute-

wait a minute.

I just read the poem

that won a hundred bucks

from the magazine contest

and sure, it was pretty good.

I mean, yeah, it was okay. but

look:

the poet writes of such
simple recollections of her childhood;

the foundations of her grandmother planting

and picking vegetables in the small

garden in the backyard,
and inside her kitchen, constantly
rearranging just about everything she looked at.

sure, the poet caressed the imagery,
folding layer on layer without sentimentality
remembrances of her grandmother unfurling
her long greying hair and brushing
it down at the mirror

in her silent evening routine

after the dishes were done
and her children, the poet’s parents,
were already in bed, but not sleeping
and she writes of listening to them

speaking softly of the things of the day
behind the closed door
with its cracked pane of opaque glass

and she writes of feeling the silken

length of her grandmother’s hair, smiling
back at her through the mirror,

the room, drenched with the scent
of a distant perfumes,

of her grandmother whose day-dresses

were patterned in flowers with shallow pockets

like her daughter’s, the poet's mother;
the bright day-dresses, aproned for housework,

the grandmother whose husband
died of diabetes

soon after the amputation,

her husband who looked older than she did,

becoming weaker sooner than she
became weakened

and the poet speaks of her grandmother
never recovering,

never thinking to try to recover
from her husband's long suffering

and she died in her sleep years later,
after months of confinement in the same

tall bed she shared with her partner in life and

wait a minute,

wait a minute!

that’s worth a hundred bucks?