Grandma Mamie’s Kitchen

-Jane Ellen Glasser

Are you hungry, maidela?—her litany
to me when I came to visit,
her fried matzo and cinnamon cookies,

my favorites. She lived in the kitchen
that smelled of Grandpa’s Limburger
cheese and fried onions. Over her

girdle and dress, the apron she never
took off. We’d sit at the Formica
table by the open window where,
overhead, a strip of flypaper danced.

Everything she made from scratch.
She measured by feel, a bissel this,
a bissel that. When her mind went bad

as soft fruit, when the family lost,
in a slow erasure, her sweet and sour
cabbage, potato kugel, kreplach,

she’d sit in her wheelchair by the TV,
watching wrestling and westerns
with Grandpa. He’d sit beside her
silence and hold her hand.

She’d look at him, reaching for a
name. The nurse fed her canned soup
from the cabinet. Grandma’s hands
kneaded the blanket in her lap.

Jane Ellen Glasser’s work has appeared in such journals as Georgia Review, Hudson Review, Southern Review, Poetry Northwest, and Beloit Poetry Journal. She has had two books published, Naming the Darkness was introduced by W.D. Snodgrass, and Light Persists won the Tampa Review Prize for Poetry.