My Grandmother Was an Orphan

Her recipe for soda bread came from a magazine

Before she learned to walk, her mother died 

of typhoid fever and exhaustion

Her father disappeared into a crowd of dead men

in Connecticut

sharing the same death year

the same name

They died with nothing 

but letters that melted 

in Old St. Joseph’s Cemetery

My grandmother was an orphan 

She was the one no one wanted

though she was smart and beautiful

as a silent movie star 

At thirteen she was sent away

to the Industrial School for wayward girls

and at sixteen

to work as a maid

in the children’s sanitarium 

Her brother was an orphan too

doted on by all the relatives

He went to Bliss College 

and became an engineer

My grandmother was an orphan

She married the clerk

at Broderick & Curtin’s Drugs

He gave her a pale emerald 

set in platinum 

Her husband liked bitter things

dark greens and pastel turnips

pretty but with a bite

rich with dirt like graves

My grandmother was an orphan

Her recipe for soda bread 

came from a ladies’ magazine

It was the same recipe

everyone used in the 70’s

with buttermilk

or yogurt thinned with water

or milk spoiled with a spoon 

of vinegar 

My grandmother was an orphan 

In her Frigidaire

there was always fruit salad glass jars

grapefruit segments rescued

from their membranes

brilliant cherries with long stems

cubes of pear and peaches

so slick they were slices

from another world

My grandmother was an orphan

with an oval face and perfect oval nails

skin pale as her soda bread

As she lay in the coffin

her daughter stroked her claddagh hands

as if they were still warm

She wore dark silk that flowed 

like the river from the mountains

of her never-home

Flash Issue 10