The grandfather I never met.
I shaved the ice cream’s month-old frost stubble
with the mound of my spoon,
like it was the cheek of the grandfather I only talked to,
through a damp warm rag on a photograph
or when I dropped by the kitchen sink
to send off a spoon dried up with rice and gravy
to a kid’s swimming class
at the mug murky with tap water and milk.
Every squint of my eyelid at a lightbulb
and its clementine beam,
frays of its whitish fibers
every time it grazed past
the marble floor
or the purplish musk of the pigeon poo
windows,
were dew drops on balmy trees of
mustard cracker Tomato Canoe City,
from the tacky carton of diarrhea hail,
when the seasons fell out of the carousel
of its menstrual cycle,
and crockery sounded by the polished waxed shelves
of the wooden hammering thunder furniture
Amongst which,
sniffed, giggled, clapped and giggled,
the rice wrapper wings of an earthy pebble stray fairy,
rolling on baby cherries like exercise balls,
animal piggyback rides
to the pit of the sun amongst the fleshy peel,
the pulpy canopy,
the fruit of the sky
and the beardy tunnels of green,
or even kissing a baby foal
of a plastic-painted horse
with nuts and bolts for horseshoes
and buckled sneakers
of mounting children
for hooves.
