Dying, the first thing you lose is your appetite.
Did they bring an hors d’oeuvres tray to tempt you?
Crackers with cream cheese? Pimento-centered olives?
A Manhattan on the rocks, no cherry?
Dad says, “Please call your grandmother. She remembers
Your name in her sleep. She hears you speaking.
She dreams of a chubby, pigtailed girl with freckles
Who picks her nose and won’t eat tomatoes.”
I’m in England. I don’t have to answer the phone
In the entryway, shared by my housemates.
I scorn your slow dying and the food you don’t want
As your gut shuts down. Hurry up and die.
Next thing, your sallow gin-blossom cheeks sink beneath
Collapsed eye sockets. Blue lids with red veins
Close over steel grey eyes, glinting eyes that sliced me
Like an underripe tomato, pale flesh
Pink as a candy heart, bloodless and flavorless.
Dad says, “Please call me back. She’s not speaking
Much but she can still hear. She squeezes when I squeeze
Her hand. She responds when I say your name.”
I’m in England. I’m on a shared phone in the hall.
I can’t call. There’s no privacy. My house-
Mates take messages, each one more urgent. I stall
With my hand on the wall phone. Can’t you die
Without dragging the rest of us with you, you bitch?
The last thing to go is your dignity.
Your diapers smell while relatives sit by your bed
And imagine you dreaming of Heaven.
Dad says, “She passed last night. I wish you’d called to say
Goodbye. Now she’s in Heaven. It’s too late.”
Your ashes stored behind a plaque reveal nothing
Of the grandmother who numbered my faults,
An arm’s-length list of failings, called me fat, lazy,
Petulant, graceless, unmarriageable.
I’m in England, bitch. I will decide what I do.
Sip your bourbon with Satan. I still hate you.
This poem appeared first in Twenty-two Twenty-eight, October 2024. https://www.twentytwotwentyeight.com/single-post/two-elegies-selected-poetry-by-jennifer-frost
Jennifer Frost Writes 