Vanessa Booher
The Summer House

How old she seems
As she sits across the table, the white
Tablecloth stretching for miles,
Vast and clear as the shore.

Playing with my napkin,
I look up and smile
As I catch my grandmother's glance
Though it is often vacant,
Boarded up, shingles strewn on the lawn.

I never knew her when she lived
In The Pink House --
She threw cocktail parties:
White linen draped across card tables
On the grass, dry Martinis
And tinted breezes of cigarette smoke.

At her new place
The entrance smells of insecticide,
It is dark and the flowers are over-watered,
Their petals are too luscious
For the heat.
She is wearing the same white slacks
That she has always worn, the same
Black Belgian shoes with their stiff bows.
Her voice wavers and calls to me:
A whisper and a cry in the same syllable,
Like a gull crashing into the surf.

<< Back to Issue 5, 2003