Granny's Asheville
By Carol Parris Krauss

Rick was allowed to take his respite on the sleeping porch.
Eight roll-out eyes to the city.
I was jealous until I over heard Uncle June tell Granny
that a mass murderer was loose, hacking
small children and burying them in bushes.

Meanwhile Aunt Rosa leaned over and twacked me on the knuckles.
Dirt gloved elbows on the linens again.
She once forgot to gift me at Christmas.
Gave Big Kelly two gifts - mine and hers.
Big Kelly kept both too, she said they had her name on them.
Spidery scrawls in carbon India ink.

Granny always served eye ball olives and celery stalks too.
Never donned pants and always had a square folded Kleenex
under her perfectly sensible stretch band Timex.
Never used anything but Palmolive-green glue.

Tang at breakfast - it settled and silted at the basin of the grape jelly glass.
Scooped out with a patina silver spoon-
sugar orange sand slurped down my throat.

Came once for a funeral and missed it.
“Good grief, Betsy”.
Ended up on Francis Brown’s front porch.
Stoop of Spanish style cottage.
Never did figure out how a Spanish stucco ended up in West Asheville.

After lunch, pimento cheese,
hike up Mt. Vernon’s Ssss’s.
Rosa told me not to slouch.
I would forge a path ahead.
You could spy the hairline of the city.
Whiffs of Mountain Laurel thumped my nose.

Granny is gone.
Aunt Rosa can’t remember who I am.
Can’t even remember Big Kelly -
who got my gift one Christmas, hers too.