My Dead Grandfather<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
My dead grandfather no longer lives in his apartment<\/p>\n
though his last dishes are clean in the dishwasher,<\/p>\n
though his leather gym bag lies unzipped in a grimace<\/p>\n
behind the bedroom closet door. My dead grandfather<\/p>\n
does not sit at his desk and write checks<\/p>\n
to black civic organizations with his pen anchored<\/p>\n
in agate. My dead white grandfather, whose skin<\/p>\n
will not retain its significance, does not underline<\/p>\n
scores at the tops of prisoners\u2019 Christian curricula.<\/p>\n
He neither shambles across the hall for one ex-wife\u2019s pot roast<\/p>\n
nor drives ten minutes over state lines to make claims<\/p>\n
on morning coffee with his first ex-wife. When I open<\/p>\n
the cabinets and every drawer in his apartment,<\/p>\n
my dead grandfather does not prevent me from considering<\/p>\n
the hand-held vacuum cleaner, the two small wineglasses,<\/p>\n
the elegant hammer and book seal with his initials, also mine.<\/p>\n
My dead grandfather stays at the church where he is boxed<\/p>\n
in a manly crate of brass and satin. I am not afraid,<\/p>\n
when we arrive, of his withered mouth sewn straight<\/p>\n
over ceramic teeth, of the drill-row forehead unable<\/p>\n
to imply a thing from temper to concentration, the hands<\/p>\n
improbably folded one over the other, the knuckles<\/p>\n
wax-museum pale. I am not afraid of the body<\/p>\n
which has been through the busted-brick labor<\/p>\n
of dying, not of its shrunkeness, its itness,<\/em> its pall.<\/p>\n And yet a grandfather is a notion that does not ash away<\/p>\n like a last cigarette ground into pavement. My dead<\/p>\n grandfather, laid out in a fine blue suit at the altar<\/p>\n of Lansing First Reformed. Myself a child<\/p>\n who has touched his things.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n “My Dead Grandfather” previously appeared in The Iowa Review.<\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Emily Van Kley’s poetry<\/a> has won the Iowa Review<\/a> and Florida Review<\/a> awards, and is forthcoming in The Way North: Upper Michigan New Works,<\/a>\u00a0<\/em>from Wayne State University Press. Though she grew up in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, she now lives in Olympia, Washington, where she works at the local food co-op.\u00a0Her work is included in\u00a0Godiva Speaks: A Celebration of Olympia Area Women Poets<\/em>.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" My Dead Grandfather My dead grandfather no longer lives in his apartment though his last dishes are clean in the dishwasher, though his leather gym bag lies unzipped in a grimace behind the bedroom closet door. My dead grandfather … Continue reading