Annie Lure is a poetry salon proprietor and durational performance artist of Mediterranean extraction. She operates worldwide.
In this tableau, my grandmother’s ankles
scab with grape cuticles; the internee’s
hapless step rattles the cobblestones
as if orphaned cradles. How he seeks
succor in my grandmother’s stucco
house: a block of nougat for his trussed tongue.
How the treed pomegranates put together their heads,
ancestors caucusing, and the internee
produces his unconsummated deed-
a hand missing a finger-
and my grandmother lifts her ruddy foot
like bounty out of the trough:
Pay me the remaining 300 LEK[1]
or I’ll have your head like the grapes.
How the first cousin-once-removed
pincers the house like a boa
vowing to excise the internee
as if a house mouse
so that my grandmother can then impute
the house to the cousin’s name.
How the internee returns to the house
as if a darkling son to his surrogate mother.
How the cousin leans like a scepter
against the stucco wall he makes a throne.
And my grandmother is widowed twice over:
a hierodule sans temple.
She stomp-stomp-stomps the grapes
to reconstitute her husband.
[1] Albanian currency
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Poetry in this post: © Annie Lure
Published with the permission of Annie Lure