Tag: grandma

How to Reconstitute Your Grandmother by Barbara Krasner

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How to Reconstitute Your Grandmother

Set out your biggest soup pot. Preferably one you inherited.
Line the pot with photographs of your grandmother throughout her life.
Add a carton of chicken broth. A parsnip, dill, celery, and carrot.
Add the wick from a Yahrzeit candle and your father’s ripped lapel from her funeral.
Fold in stories, including the rumors, the insults she gave and received.
Sprinkle with salt for the hard times.
Only a pinch of sugar for the good times, because things could always be worse.
Bring to a boil. Cover and simmer overnight.
Skim the fat from the top and let cool. Pour into ice cube trays and freeze.
Serve up Grandma anytime.

*

Barbara Krasner is a New Jersey-based poet of ten collections, including the ekphrastic Poems of the Winter Palace (Bottlecap Press, 2025), The Night Watch (Kelsay Books, 2025), Insomnia: Poems after Lee Krasner (Dancing Girl Press, 2026), and the forthcoming The Wanderers (Shanti Arts, 2026), and Memory Collector (Kelsay Books, 2027).

Wedding Music by Lynn Glicklich Cohen

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Wedding Music

How utterly ridiculous that she survived
specifically to see her youngest granddaughter
get married after ten agonizing months
post-brain surgery and several rounds
of chemo for a tumor that was
the kind that grows back to finally kill you
only to be prevented from leaving
the care facility that’s become home—
having given up her condo when
she could not remember “apple penny umbrella”
or where she’d left the car—held hostage
by a broken elevator for god’s sake, and since
everyone here has known forever
about the importance of this wedding
because that’s the kind of place it is,
sharing grandchildren’s nachas and mitzvahs—
between staff’s urgent calls to Mitsubishi for
service and caregiver texts back and forth
to alert the bride, everyone wants
to kill someone, even the violinist, who has
another gig and whose fingers are getting stiff
in the giant ballroom kept cold until the mob
of attendees are seated for dinner
and dancing at which point it gets hot,
not advisable in combination with the open bar
and slinky cocktail garb, but even blowing
on them isn’t helping until the cellist
offers his pack of Little Hotties hand warmers,
which she takes gratefully, and just in time,
as the grandmother, looking abashed, dazed,
and yet still somehow regal in a blue dress,
is escorted adorably by two tuxedoed little boys,
and the violinist has the sudden urge to stand,
salute the grandmother, who barely made it
and her standing prompts an ovation, clapping
and mazel tovs! and only after everyone has sat
back down does it occur to the violinist
that she’s taken something
away from the bride, but honestly,
she doesn’t care—she has her whole life
ahead of her—and she raises her bow, cues
the others and they begin to play.

*

Lynn Glicklich Cohen lives in Milwaukee, WI, walking distance to a Great Lake and an aspiring river. She spends at least some of every day reading and/or writing poetry. She is profoundly grateful to ONE ART and the numerous other literary journals that have published her work.

She Wanted Purple Jeans for Christmas by Kalina Smith

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She Wanted Purple Jeans for Christmas

They say purple people really love purple.
And that is so true of my Grandma Carolyn.
If she could, she’d dye all she owns with orchil,
And put food coloring in her chicken-and-dumplings.

Grandma loves her irises, but I hope
One day she’ll have violets, lilacs, and bellflower
Because she’s faithful, loving, gracious, and gold.
Maybe she’ll get those with this spring’s showers.

I hope she knows that to me, she is mulberry.
Healing, protecting amethyst and devoted lavender.
A serene periwinkle and strong like my pawpaw’s plum trees.
On her irises, rests a purple emperor.

*

Kalina Smith is a writer of gothic and literary fiction and confessional nonfiction and poetry. She is a high school English teacher in Arkansas. She has previously been published in Nebo, A Literary Journal, Free Spirit, The Ignatian, FLARE: The Flagler Review, and the Cackling Kettle.

Hunter’s Moon with Grandson by Kelly DuMar

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Hunter’s Moon with Grandson

I am breading skinless breasts,
All Things Considered is on, children
of war, numbering them. Tug of my
shirt, a hushed voice, turn
the volume down.

I want to show you something.

Everyone’s hungry. My fingers
are glopped with flour and egg.
Dining room’s unlit, table’s not set.
It’s a test. My answer counts.

He shows me a window.
October is late. Ascending from
evergreen tops, imprinted on dusk––
a heroic globe of uncaptured light.

*

Kelly DuMar is a poet, playwright and workshop facilitator from Boston. She’s author of four poetry collections, including jinx and heavenly calling, published by Lily Poetry Review Books, March 2023. Her poems, images and nonfiction are published in Bellevue Literary Review, Tupelo Quarterly, Thrush, Cleaver, Glassworks, and more. For decades Kelly has taught a variety of creative writing workshops, including monologue play labs with showcases for the International Women’s Writing Guild and the Transformative Language Arts Network. Kelly produces the Featured Open Mic for the Journal of Expressive Writing. Reach her at kellydumar.com

Driving My Granddaughter Back to Her Dad’s House by Susan Vespoli

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Driving My Granddaughter Back to Her Dad’s House

Spring
trees covered
with blossoms toss
shade over bus stops. Yellow
palo verde and purple jacaranda
offering refuge to roofless beings
on a street where my son
was roused from sleep
by a cop, then shot
on his last
24-hours
alive.

Shopping
carts piled with
blankets, plastic bags,
a man holding a cardboard
sign at the stoplight: HUNGRY.
People huddled in the shadow
of the onramp. A roadside
altar: flowers and
a wooden
cross.

I drop
into a litany
of what I might
have done differently
until Molly points and shouts, Look!
from her car seat. Two massive
trees backlit in sunlight,
lavender and gold
shimmering
like wind
chimes.

*

Susan Vespoli is a poet from Phoenix, AZ. Susan’s poems have appeared in Rattle, Anti-Heroin Chic, New Verse News, Mom Egg Review, Gyroscope Review, and others. She is the author of Blame It on the Serpent (Finishing Line Press, Jan. 2022) and Cactus as Bad Boy (Kelsay Books, 2023). https://susanvespoli.com/

Brain Tonic by Luke Stromberg

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Brain Tonic
        for John Foy

Like my grandmother before me, I like to drink
A refreshing can of Coca Cola for breakfast
It’s part of my arrested development.
Sadly, I never developed a taste for coffee,
A classic marker of maturity,
Like when a girl gets her first training bra.
I do enjoy the occasional hot tea
(With too much sugar and milk), but I prefer
To keep it low class. Don’t misunderstand—
It’s not a political gesture, just my “truth.”
I find the initial sip of carbonated
Sweetness akin to the lost ritual
Of that first frosty-morning drag from a Camel,
Both pleasures sneered at by the professional class.
My uncle once compared smokers to Jews
In Nazi Germany! The comparison
Was, as the kids would say, “problematic,”
But health can be a form of tyranny,
I guess…What was I talking about again?

Ah, yes! Healthful, delicious Coca Cola!
“The Intellectual Drink,” “The Ideal Brain Tonic,”
Said to relieve exhaustion and calm the nerves,
To satisfy the thirsty and help the weary.
Like Trump, I drink several cans a day
And sometimes feel powerless with rage.
I’m sorry (sort of) for these affinities
But overwhelmed by social change and struggling
To gain purchase, I’ve turned to Coca Cola.
On an airplane one time, a woman asked
If I could try to be less animated.
I was relating a story to a friend,
You see, and am excitable by nature.
…Ah, I am exhausted, so exhausted…
Beat down by politics, divorce, and failure,
The past few months have been a son-of-a-bitch.
I’d like the world to buy me a Coke, for once,
And keep me company. It’s the real thing
That I want today, the real thing, the real thing.

*

Luke Stromberg’s poetry and criticism have appeared in Smartish Pace, The Hopkins Review, The New Criterion, The Philadelphia Inquirer, Golidad Review, Think Journal, The Raintown Review, The Dark Horse, Cassandra Voices, and several other venues. He also serves as the Associate Poetry Editor of E-Verse Radio. Luke works as an adjunct professor at Eastern University and La Salle University and lives in Upper Darby, PA.