16 GAMES OF CHESS

When his wife died in childbirth

On February 25, 1927 my grandfather Joe

Felt his heart stop and then contract

Until it was small and hard and round

And cold as a marble. Ase, his brother,

Brought him home and sat with him.

Joe's deft fingers shook. For three days

He sat in the dark. On the fourth,

My great aunts Jenny and Lena

Brought his chess set from the apartment

Joe never visited again. Jenny opened the blinds

While Lena set up the board. She won

Fifteen games in a row.

She thought she was winning game sixteen

When Joe's eyes narrowed. "Mate in five," he said.

"So you remember how to talk?" said his sister.

NOT ABOUT MY AUNTS

NOT ABOUT MY AUNTS

I have been advised to write poems

About people I know, or,

Failing that, about myself.

Perhaps one on my aunts? I have many

And, mysteriously, new ones

Appear sometimes, old women

I’ve never met who still

Have known me all my life.

So, the next poem that came by

I looked at sharply, trying to see

If it might be about an aunt –

Aunt Sadie, if choice were mine

Who is short and sharp and witty

And walks gamely on crippled legs.

But the poem had a cold, mad eye

And was plainly about the Emperor Wang;

He and Sadie would never live well together

Nor Anne, nor Doris, nor Mabel,

And certainly not Rose or Jenny or the one

Who died young and her name with her.

(As for my Aunt Tamara – she

Is a Russian novel).