{"id":808,"date":"2024-01-28T14:13:03","date_gmt":"2024-01-28T22:13:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jick.ca\/?p=808"},"modified":"2024-01-28T14:13:03","modified_gmt":"2024-01-28T22:13:03","slug":"granny","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jick.ca\/?p=808","title":{"rendered":"Granny"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>[expanded version of the poem <strong>2022<\/strong>]<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Is this a poem?<br \/>\nHow could I tell?<br \/>\nAre these feelings?<br \/>\nIs this a life?<\/p>\n<p>I recapitulate my grandmother:<\/p>\n<p>Her parents were wealthy farmers in Germany<br \/>\nbut \u201cThey didn\u2019t like the Kaiser,\u201d<br \/>\nso they moved to Nebraska \u2014 rich farmers<br \/>\non good land.<\/p>\n<p>Adventurous spirit, she went to college in Chicago<br \/>\nwhence my grandfather whisked her away to Florida,<br \/>\npromising an agricultural wonderland.<\/p>\n<p>It was!<\/p>\n<p>Florida grew any\/everything like magic.<br \/>\nShe picked and dressed and cooked miracles.<br \/>\nI got to crank the black cast iron separator<br \/>\nthat turned fresh milk from the cow<br \/>\ninto milk, cream and butter.<\/p>\n<p>Pop read Kipling to me<br \/>\nand told me of Yutch,<br \/>\nthe idiot on the survey team<br \/>\nwith whom he crossed the continent<br \/>\nand avoided World War I.<\/p>\n<p>Pop taught me to \ufb01sh and hunt<br \/>\nand let me teach myself to read.<br \/>\nHe was a good man in a bad time.<\/p>\n<p>Granny could do anything.<br \/>\nBut then Pop died.<\/p>\n<p>For a decade she traveled the world<br \/>\nseeing every sight and bringing home mementos<br \/>\nbut all she really wanted to remember was him<br \/>\nand when that longing couldn\u2019t be distracted<br \/>\nshe turned to daytime TV and junk food,<br \/>\nrenouncing her life.<\/p>\n<p>Her life got even<br \/>\nby hanging on to her for 103 years.<br \/>\nFinally she refused to eat, and we let her go.<\/p>\n<p>So today, after two years of plague<br \/>\nand a decade of undetected fascist takeover<br \/>\nand a lifetime of burning fossil fuels<br \/>\nI grow numb from watching the southern sky<br \/>\nfor \ufb01reballs<br \/>\nand the news for climate catastrophe<br \/>\nand daytime TV starts to appeal<br \/>\nand junk food starts to look good<br \/>\nand I\u2019m tired of being ashamed<br \/>\nfor doing too little to stop this<br \/>\nand I wonder when I\u2019ll stop eating.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>(<em>20 March 2022<\/em>)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>[expanded version of the poem 2022] &nbsp; Is this a poem? How could I tell? Are these feelings? Is this a life? I recapitulate my grandmother: Her parents were wealthy farmers in Germany but \u201cThey didn\u2019t like the Kaiser,\u201d so they moved to Nebraska \u2014 rich farmers on good land.<a href=\"https:\/\/jick.ca\/?p=808\" class=\"read-more\">Read More&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-808","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2020-and-after","category-poetry"],"gutentor_comment":0,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jick.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/808","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jick.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jick.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jick.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jick.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=808"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/jick.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/808\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":809,"href":"https:\/\/jick.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/808\/revisions\/809"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jick.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=808"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jick.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=808"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jick.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=808"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}