Grandfather’s Bones are turning to poppy and stone.
Pappa, the optimist, gives him a sloppy hug as he sits topless
and his ocular nerves hum like a gramophone.
He’s embarrassed, we sit to debate what his new disease will encompass
as his weeks stream from months, months from years.
Ectoplasts festering, transforming from glistening membranes
to petals and minerals. It’s then that the family overhears,
their ears perked, grandfather’s mumbling cellophane
voice; pralines with a zaftig ecdysiast — before
his saltine skin developed liver spots, her round
arms developed in him a despotism to abhor,
her brown curls, her ambient skin abound.
Scarcely ensconced are we in this casing without the powers
to prevent our personage from the massacre of flowers.