Grandma Laughlin, gone forever, listens always
I talk to her out loud, loudly and often
Guardian angel of the trolley lines, spirit of the Chicago Public Library, goddess of suffrage and suffering
“Blanche, I’ll bet you thought we saw the last
of that ass Hitler, but Deutchland Uber Alles is on an endless loop
A rancid record spinning crackling – thunk-kathunk-kathunk
Who’d’a thunk it, Grandma, it’s’ happening again.”
And even though she was too classy to swear
Even though she wouldn’t have said SHIT if she had a mouthful of it
I cuss freely when I speak to her
What’s she gonna do about it, anyway?
“Blanche, that miserable fuckwit will get us all blown to kingdom come
Bastard takes everything FDR stood for and
folds it into paper airplanes
sets it on fire
burns it with a spyglass and
feeds it to the pigeons
(strike that – I don’t believe he would ever feed a creature other than himself)
There is a haze on all our hearts, a deep groan of disgust…”
Blanche’s face is in my mind
In her heyday, an irrepressible Socialist, FDR fangirl, chatterbox, survivor
By the time I knew her, she was weary
Made it through the Great Depression but
bound by the other kind, dull and grey and nothing to say
But she blinks slowly and seems to convey,
“I know, Amer. I wish I could say I lived to see the other side of the nightmare,
but this one is so much worse.”
There is no moral to this poem, no twist, no clever upshot
Just remembering her face, the calm after the storm, ready for the next one
© 2025 Sharp Little Pencil/Amy Barlow Liberatore
For What’s Happening Now, the prompt was Grandma. I had a grandpa, too, but Blanche, my mom’s mother, took the cake. One of my favorite human beings ever. Love you, Grandma Laughlin.
LIFE WITHOUT LIMITS
Were I granted
life without limits
I would bind hatred,
tangle it in silk threads
all shades of red, gold, green
and send it hurtling
into space, no trace
of meanness left to feel.
I would surround
a golden box of pure love
with small fans
pointed up at
wind turbines
and set it free in
breezes of sweet thoughts
strong enough to
surround the earth and,
if the silk balloon’s helium should fail,
all hatred would drift into space
and be forgotten.
Were I granted
life without limits,
I’d press the edge of
the invisible envelope
until
peace
would
reign.
© 2012 Amy Barlow Liberatore/Sharp Little Pencil
For Sunday Scribblings, which asked us to envision “no limits,” and for Three Word Wednesday: Tangle, Shade, and Feel. Also for Imaginary Garden With Real Toads, in honor of Nelson Mandela’s 94th birthday. Well done, good servant of humankind, and good health to you, sir. Peace, Amy
Sharp Little Pencil 