by Judith W. Monroe

Created on: November 07, 2008

HOME MOVIES

Her small black shoes moved down

from the upper corner of the screen,

the hem of her flowered dress

billowing into view. She's the imperious

star of quick change, the bawdy bride risen

out of eighty years, re-spliced randomly,

an impervious, convincing, crazy mix:

hill-country and lady, my grandmother,

alive upon the wall.

In the silence, I dub her contradictory tongue,

her curses and confessions, that sweet-talking

brogue with penny candy finesse.

She rolls across the room, like a seasoned sailor,

headed for the sick child's bed. Framed,

her expression inscrutable, her arms outstretched,

she assumes a Chaplin stance,; shoving aside her

Ladies Aid propriety, her summer dress bunched

between her swollen knees, she shuffles a medicine dance.

"Cured", I call out to her, a sick child, once again,

and like a myth, she answers, her voice

reaching me from far beyond the wall.

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