Memorial Day
“It was a savings,” Dad says, “to get it
done when they did Uncle John’s.”
“And one less thing for you
to worry about,” Mom adds, as if this
is what worries me. But it’s why
I picture them there now, kneeling
in the grass. They turn over the dirt
with a trowel, lift each flower
from the garden supply’s plastic trays—
red and white geraniums, yellow pansies,
each with its clump of roots and dirt—
then tamp them down in the holes
they’ve dug. It takes all morning.
Dad fills a coffee can from the spigot
back by the car. They stop to sip
from water bottles brought from home.
“I’m not sure we’ll be back next year,”
I hear Mom say, though they’ve done this
every year for decades. Otherwise
it’s a quiet ritual and I wonder
if they ever get so lost in it—forgetting
sore hips, achy knees, forgetting finally
even where they are—that they
glance up and go breathless
all over again, seeing their own names
there on the family headstone
and below each: one date and a dash.
Chicken Meat
Ji rou, my son says, staring into his
silver laptop but teaching me
a little Mandarin as he mouses through
his Chinese homework. Chicken
meat, Preston translates, explaining
how people in China say this
so you’ll know that what they mean
is what you eat, not the living
bird. Like niu rou and zhu rou, he adds.
Cow meat. Pig meat. But what
I hear is the creak of memory’s hinge
as it swings open, as Aunt Patty asks us—
my cousins Ben and Tom and me,
we’re still school kids, elbow to elbow
around the kitchen table, and she’s
still here, alive, not sick, not hurting,
just asking us, Want some more
chicken meat? Even then I wondered
why not just say chicken?
But always I’ve loved the quirks
and wrinkles in how we talk. And now
these syllables are three tight knots
in the frayed rope I follow back
into the past—chicken meat, chicken
meat—hand over hand into the never
ending, the never lets you go,
though Patty’s been gone seven years,
and even if I can’t hear her voice
I can still feel the easy rhythm
of her talking—So how’s everything
going? You know, there’s a bright side—
encouraging, taking care in such
a casual way I hardly knew it
was happening. It’s just Patty, looking
up at me there at the kitchen table,
red reading glasses pushed back
in her silver hair. She smiles. Well,
are you hungry? Want something to eat?
Read two poems by Matthew Thorburn previously appearing in Terrain.org.
Header photo by ch_ch, courtesy Shutterstock.