Tuesday, October 14, 2014

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.


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