Poetry Tuesday: Tania Rochelle

Dreaming of Grandma
by Tania Rochelle

I offer her a turn
on my broken pogo stick,

put bees in the postal box
she checks for spies,

and switch off Mr. Rogers
so she has no one to talk to.

Even better, I turn her into a four-year old,

send her down to the basement
with teenaged Dennis

while I fry potatoes for dinner.

He shows her the meat-locker
full of blood and muscle
he'll shut her up in if she tattles.

Later, we have hamburgers,
and then I braid her hair just like mine.


******
Reprinted with permission from the author from the book, Karoake Funeral, Snake Nation Press, Valdosta, Georgia.

Tania Rochelle was born in 1963 and raised in Powder Springs, Georgia, which was back then a treacherously small town. She received a BA in English from the University of Georgia and graduated from the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College, in Swannanoa, North Carolina. She teaches creative writing at Porfolio Center in Atlanta.