Elegy for My Gypsy Grandmother

Brandi George

She was starving, and I have never eaten dirt,
so how can anyone forgive me? In 1933,
there is no time; want impregnates blood
as ashes are stirred by my grandmother’s hand.
Only deities create the canned goods she stacks
to the ceiling, the dance she does for rain, babies,
and good tips. Maybe she’s right, this wayward
motion of the body is the only prayer fit

for a divine eye. After her death, we clean
the cupboards, marvel at the waste of her life’s work.
She loved her second son best,
he who was both a girl and seducer of girls.
On my father’s mechanic’s shirt there is a name
that will die and be forgotten. In my chest,
her reckless laughter reigns. I cannot suppress
the backbite of my longing, the crush of hungry
gods, the knot of my duct-taped heart.