My grandmother is only one day
into her infirmity and doped up
on Morphine. Her shoulder is immobile
beneath layers of plaster.
Her eighty-five-year-old frame droops
from the weight of it.
My mother confesses:
she cannot take care of her mother.
I am not she says a nursemaid.
My mother is angry. Angry
at my sister who didn’t give enough
support, angry at my grandmother
for shuffling her feet, angry even
at the dog that was tucked beneath
my grandmother’s arm
as they all three tried to squeeze
into the door of the vet’s office.
She calls me from the emergency room
to say that grandmother fractured her shoulder
in three places. She’s become an invalid
overnight, she says. My sister calls her cruel
for refusing to run the bathwater, refusing
to wash my grandmother’s naked body, for
not even considering renting
a wheelchair for her to move from place
to place. When grandmother whispers
that she is afraid to walk, my mother
tells her that there’s nothing wrong with
her legs, tells her she’ll have to go to a
nursing home if she won’t walk
to the bathroom: one piss in the bed is
understandable, two is teetering too
close to in-home care.
My sister does not understand that there
is too much to overcome between them—
always the memory of the black dress
grandmother refused to wear
on the day of her husband’s funeral—
the way she turned to my mother and said,
I am not in mourning.
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The author breaks the lines like this so that it connects to the next one. If she didn't do that, it would be a choppy poem that wouldn't flow nicely. She broke up the stanzas like this, because they each have a different idea or a topic change. Not only this, but it ties into the theme of being fractured.
ReplyDeleteKyla & Josh
This poem reveals a lot of conflict within this family. The mother is offering her own form of revenge by refusing to give sympathy to the grandmother who was the coldhearted one initially. The tone is somber and strained. The author lets the conflict flow naturally into the reveal of why there is conflict to begin with. The poem is very direct with its meaning, and there is little room for creative imagery.
ReplyDeleteAlquasia Maye & Jesziah Vazquez
ReplyDeleteThe tercets display the tension between all of the members of the family, the tercets being tightly woven together. The line breaking gives some lines more power than others and really shows the emotion that emanates from each character. The last line in the poem could have a lot of meanings. It could be that the grandmother's not in mourning from the fractured relationship between herself, her daughter and her grandchildren. It's known that the grandmother isn't mourning the death of her husband. The poem displays that strain of relationships and the last line suddenly brings it to a close, as a way to show that the tension has ended.
Fractured is a great poem. The tension that is created throughout the poem is surreal. The structure of the poem has a bone-like shape. The breaks in the poem cause a flow that pulls the reader in.
ReplyDeleteKordae G-Mills and Turon Parker
DeleteThe poem is mainly in tercets. The tercets lets the last line of the poem stand out, making the reader realize it's significance in the poem. The line breaking basically keeps the poem going. The poem describes a tense situation. I think the last line explains why the mother is angry, why there is so much tension.
ReplyDeleteJoshua and Kyla
ReplyDeleteIn the line, "My mother is angry. Angry..." It adds emphasis on how the character feels by stating it twice. It creates tension and suspense on as to why the character feels that way.
The poem is about the conflict between the poets mother and grandmother. The reader is coerced into feeling sympathetic towards the grandmother before it is revealed that the mother is cruel to her as a form of revenge for something that emotionally wounded her in the past. The last line of many of the tercets aren't finished and almost fall onto the first line of the next stanza. The author does this so that the reader is able to read the poem ore fluently. The tone of this poem is angry, solemn and full of tension just like the relationship between the mother and grandmother is.
ReplyDelete