For Grandma

 

 

 

For Grandma

 

Hold a button as you go by

or you will be the next to die,

 

said by someone who never lied:

Important portents we should know

as by the graveyard we would go.

 

For Grandma, forewarnings of woe

were frequently doled out freely,

slipped into recall like candy.

 

Find a penny (face-up only!),

putting it safe in your left shoe

and make a wish, it will come true.

 

(It’s frankly something I still do.)

Don’t put your hat upon the bed—

someone you know will soon be dead.

 

Rhyming burrowed them in my head.

Mother! my mother incensed, pled,

don’t put such nonsense in their head!

 

Too late I’m afraid, those words plucked:

words of worrying, words of luck;

once they were rhymed—forever stuck.

 

 

 

David M. Perkins

 

 

David M. Perkins’ three poetry volumes: In From Forever, I May or May Not Love You, and Post-Modern Blues are available from Ice Cube Press. His poems, reviews, and essays have appeared in Luminaura, Cæsura, Oziana, Prosetrics, The Wild Word, Willows Wept Review, Caveat Lector, Christopher Street Magazine, and for the Wordsworth Trust (UK) among others. Onetime bookstore owner and former university press publishing professional, he’s currently owned by a blue-point Siamese cat named Wystan