Grandpa

Remember how you swung
my hand through the mall on Monday afternoons
and bought me corndogs from the A&W?
You plopped me in that wiry white chair and watched
me kick blinking sneakers into the bottom
of the table, ramming a mustardy dog into my nose.
You laughed, told everyone I was yours,
your granddaughter. Your trouble.

I watched, amused, when you flirted
with teenage waitresses, complimenting
their crimped hair and delicate hands.
You’re trouble.

You. You couldn’t let a neighbor’s yard grow
higher than yours, couldn’t keep your house
colder than eighty in the winter, couldn’t let anyone
drive your ninety-two-year-old bones
anywhere except to the hospital in the ambulance
when you couldn’t breathe and your body soaked
your shirt through.

But you sat propped in the emergency room
with oxygen and wires on your chest, heaves
between hiccups, and kept repeating that you had twins
and a granddaughter in college and can’t
you have some socks for your cold, calico feet.

When you died, I wrote a poem because
your son packed your army medals in a box.
Because the snow stopped. Because Grandma
can’t drive, the kittens were mewing for their milk,
and who’s going to rake the street gutter
after a storm? Because I last saw you flirting
with your nurse.

--Kari Jackson, 2007