Walking Past my Grandparents' House in Early Spring
 

It’s smaller than I remember—this place where the willow grew
wiser each season. As children we swung from its catkin-whips,
spun and spun until the sky wobbled. But when my grandfather’s

stroke tied his hands in impossible knots, his tongue grew mossy
as spring underfoot, wilting his words in so many tucked-away places:
the forked alley behind their house where the crabapples spit,

beneath the canopy of pine in Mrs. Rosario’s back yard, in front
of the mirror that hung crooked and smudged in the yolk
of their basement. His smile used to bloom through the soft foliage

of his face, his hands smelling of olive oil and red wine vinegar.
He’d eat fontinella on crisp bread and speak of Chicago Heights,
how during a funeral procession, the cars gleamed like just-shined shoes;

and the women, in the midst of their grieving, collapsed like monuments.
When he died, I found my grandmother in rubble, calling his name
so loudly, even the dead moaned. I heard the sound of her cries, her groans,

ripe as pulled fruit. Today, the tree bends like a lament, a rooted grief.
Its vines drag across the lifelines, the sprouting fungi. There is nothing
more to see, only those budding catkins, the fidelity of a backyard willow.  

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I am a recent graduate of the University of Wisconsin-Parkside where I received a BA in English with a writing concentration. Currently, I am preparing for a graduate program in Milwaukee and hope to begin study in the fall of 2008. I live and work in Wisconsin. I have a beautiful, energetic little boy named Uriah and a fiancé named Sam—both the loves of my life. My poems have previously appeared or are forthcoming in Eclectica, Lily, The Potomac, Stirring & Shakespeare’s Monkey Review.
E-mail:ebruno2 at wi dot rr dot com  

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autumn 2007 | kaleidowhirl
books and chapbooks from authors in this issue