Category: Photos

Old #poems #amwriting #amrevising #amlooking

While I was looking for another piece of writing tonight, I found a poem I wrote about my grandmother a long time ago. I sort of liked it. I revised it a little and liked it even more. Here it is, along with the photo that inspired it:grandma

A Surprising Photograph of Grace Milvada Caroline Matilda Robison

She told stories:

The Linotype was a dangerous

Machine. If you weren’t careful,

It would take your arm at the elbow,

A little careless daydreaming;

She was pulled from the sixth grade

When influenza took her mother;

She had wanted to be a teacher

But never returned to school;

Her husband almost killed a bull

After it chased her across the pen;

The bull smelled his anger,

Stayed away till dark;

During a draught, it rained

Directly on their garden,

But left the house dry;

Ball lightning burst though the door,

Bounced through the kitchen

Before disappearing.

She thought mostly of going home,

Dropped twenty cents into a coin purse

And walked away in her nightgown,

A ghost inching down the road.

I have a photo of my grandmother

Standing atop the radiator of a Ford

In a bathing suit and swimming

Cap. It is a cracked, out-of-focus,

Yellow with age,

Her most crystalline surviving

Testament. The light surrounds her.

She is there, windmilling

Her arms to maintain balance

While the photographer says,

“One more second, I’ve almost got it!

Stay right where you are!”

I have new #Fiction here: #Conjunctions

Conjunctions: 57  The Kin Issue

I was very excited to see my contributor’s copy of Conjunctions arrive today. Many thanks to the wonderful team that but this issue together. It’s a beautiful book. Many thanks to Bradford Morrow for including my story “Charlie Moon’s Last Performance” amongst stories and poems by so many wonderful writers (including, among others, Joyce Carol Oates, Rick Moody, Karen Russell…and my story follows fiction by Ann Beattie and precedes fiction by Peter Orner). Here are some photos: