covid-19: 3.25.20: 6:20 pm: grandma
things are looking
grim here
for us in ny
my grey male cat ronaldo
doing big meows–he‘s shy,
but the talker, don‘t know
what‘s bothering him–
meanwhile,
am thinking our lives,
minus the constant barrage
of radio, tv, internet, zoom, face-
time, smartphone, blahblah ad almost infinitum,
is more like our, my grandma’s:
they did not go to the gym–they spent
almost the entire day in the house:
she got up, probably made breakfast,
certainly coffee dunking in her sugar
cube, adding milk–maybe she did
a day shop–
no refrigerator, just an ice-box–
the ice had to be picked up from
the delivery guy in his horse-drawn
cart, then to her apartment–where she washes
clothes, w/a washboard, definitely irons–when was the last time
you saw an ironing board?–then
maybe lunch–then clean clean clean
my mother said you could eat off
my grandma, leah’s, floor–and she probably
wasn‘t the only one–cleanliness was definitely
next to godliness in the bronx, for all the blatant
cockroach, mice reasons–
then, prepare dinner, serve dinner, maybe eat
dinner, wash the dishes–and who knows
what i‘m leaving out–oh yes, the children,
the grandchildren, raising your own,
getting them thru school, then helping care for
the grandkids, working in the garment
district, in the sweatshops, til her hands
swollen misshapen bent w/arthritis–she paints scenes of
her outskirts of vienna childhood–
nor, ever, once, did she complain–