Sweeping after Having Remembered Mi Abuela 

i.

At the sink, the talavera

has clanked, broken water, and

chipped so that I must hide it, while 

noiselessly, you sit,

paint splat across an elbow, the

10 o’clock news rattling on and on

about armed robbery and wrecks-- 

the pit bull curled like a

rattlesnake at your boot.  

ii.

There was a time when

we were in Mexico, and I’d packed

our plates and the bowls I 

promised to purchase each trip we

made;  when we moved to

this house I never wanted,

these plates stayed put away,

same newsprint wrapping, 

same cardboard box, 

same thing that happened, 

I sometimes fear, 

to the knuckles we once called my heart.

iii.

In the bed, you sleep.  The dogs

snore and sigh.  A pillow

covering your face from the 

whisk of the broom I run over the

hickory floors you laid last winter.  

Te vas a casar con una viuda.  

You will marry a widow, I recall my Indian

abuela stutter as she pushed

a bundle of yellow straw 

over my unprotected feet 

when she would come to the States

to visit us and get money

for those of us who stayed behind.

Ironically, it is you who married

the widower.