At Grandma's When I Was 14
Daniel Aristi
In the living room
They all were able-bodied
Chairs and tables
And cupboards but
Let’s put it like this:
Had a call to arms been issued
To the nation’s furniture by some High Command
None of them
Except maybe for the sofa
None would have been drafted
Due to their age and
Poor condition.
* * *
The fireplace
Gaped open ever cold
(A metaphor also for you-know-what
I thought
But I was fourteen then)
I also used to think
It was like a skull’s frozen yawn
That opened up to a ribcage and more bones
Down in the basement somewhere
(But this I never said
To anyone
Either).
* * *
The marble of
The bathroom walls had shown
For years now in their patterns
The same old, distorted demons:
Here’s The Elephant Man, The Big Dick, and then The Galaxy.
Below, The Cat, beside
The Jellyfish and Auntie Martha
And The Small Dick
Down by the soap.
* * *
The kitchen:
Soup.
* * *
The bedroom, I hated.
Bedrooms, I’d figured out already
Are such disparate entities
All called the same anodyne, giveaway ‘bed-room’ name
But, in some, life was celebrated
Like in the magazines we smuggled past
The priests at school
Whilst in others life was but breathing
Like in here:
A long countdown of hypertension pills
In the presence of crucifixes hanging stern
On every wall.
In the living room
They all were able-bodied
Chairs and tables
And cupboards but
Let’s put it like this:
Had a call to arms been issued
To the nation’s furniture by some High Command
None of them
Except maybe for the sofa
None would have been drafted
Due to their age and
Poor condition.
* * *
The fireplace
Gaped open ever cold
(A metaphor also for you-know-what
I thought
But I was fourteen then)
I also used to think
It was like a skull’s frozen yawn
That opened up to a ribcage and more bones
Down in the basement somewhere
(But this I never said
To anyone
Either).
* * *
The marble of
The bathroom walls had shown
For years now in their patterns
The same old, distorted demons:
Here’s The Elephant Man, The Big Dick, and then The Galaxy.
Below, The Cat, beside
The Jellyfish and Auntie Martha
And The Small Dick
Down by the soap.
* * *
The kitchen:
Soup.
* * *
The bedroom, I hated.
Bedrooms, I’d figured out already
Are such disparate entities
All called the same anodyne, giveaway ‘bed-room’ name
But, in some, life was celebrated
Like in the magazines we smuggled past
The priests at school
Whilst in others life was but breathing
Like in here:
A long countdown of hypertension pills
In the presence of crucifixes hanging stern
On every wall.