Human Bean

“You’re a poor excuse for a human bean,”

my grandmother scolded me, in her low voice,

one sultry afternoon at her house when

we’d done something wrong.

I never did find out

exactly what I’d done

that annoyed her so much.

I suppose we continued

to make noise

while she was

taking a nap,

my brother and I,

after she’d told us to be quiet.

I mean …

there was nothing to do????,

which was why we were in the junk room

in the first place.

And, it probably didn’t help any

not going downstairs

any of the times

she’d called us.

So, now she was standing

in the doorway

observing  me.

My brother had not

gone down either, but since

he was 10 and a half months younger

than my five years,

he was not addressed.

My top lip curled up.

My nostrils flared out, too,

when our eyes met.

“I’m not a bean,”

I asserted in my low voice,

still baffled at her meaning.

She gave me the funniest look

like, “You know what I mean,”

but I didn’t.

Then, she raised her eyebrows,

flared her nostrils, and

twisted down her lip

on the right side

giving me that other look like

“You’re putting me on,”

but I wasn’t.

For the life of me,

I could not figure out

how a person

could be a bean.

Then, it occurred to me,

“Oh, Lord. I’m going to get it

for talking back.”

But, I didn’t.

Because I wasn’t, really.

She’d given us her best stern stare

attempting to straighten us out

with words and the look

Instead of using a belt, or a stick,

or a switch, or her hand

like Mama and Daddy

used to do.

It must have been

the expression on my face

that got her.

We kept studying

each other.

Me, I was assessing her upsetness gage,

and, MaMaw, well she was doing her best

to try and figure me out.

Next thing I knew

she rared back her head

and commenced to laughing,

and I mean hard!

That was the first time I’d

ever known that grandmothers

could laugh out loud.

You can imagine my relief

when I got her laugh,

instead of the belt,

and that’s when we became friends

that summer afternoon upstairs

in the forbidden junk room

in her old house.

Denise C. Buschmann

June 4, 2009

My first submitted and first published poem in Journal of Modern Poetry 15 (May 2013)

Chicago Poetry Press

This was my first effort at writing poetry. I tweaked it for almost four years before getting the crazy idea that I could submit it somewhere. Do I look at it now and think about trimming the fat? Sure. But, I may not ever. I had no critique or help, so I'm content, for now, to let it be all right.