I Am My Grandmother’s Second Daughter
I ask her surgeon to repeat herself. The heart of a twenty-five year old. An incantation soaring, new
scar on her wrinkled abdomen. No one’s fault she and I not in generational order. She has the heart
of a twenty-five year old. Broken by the damage of parents who wanted a boy instead. Washing
windows in exchange for plates of food at a friend’s house in Brooklyn. Rose demands on a scale
that shakes Fukushima. Starved for eight days before doctors can first cut into her famine. Walking
in front of cars, eyes closed, praying to die forty years ago, or was it last week, first bout of
widowhood quaking to the surface, and this is the needle coming up through our skin, the mouth
bearing witness, rapture of every unsolved problem, repeated, an assumption I have given up on
correcting. Tossed into the air by every doctor, aide, therapist, technician, nurse. Her only child
long scattered and I whisper so only I can hear the correction. Granddaughter. Granddaughter.
Granddaughter.
Nina Bannett is a Professor of English at New York City College of Technology, CUNY. Her newest book of poems, Motion Photos, is forthcoming from Finishing Line Press in 2024.