Poetry of Issue 9: 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–