The Grandmothers
Mary Ann Larkin
The grandmothers stand
silent as mountains,
make caves of their bodies
where the children curl like bats
gibbering for their mothers.
The grandmothers pay no heed,
sorrow just a rain that falls.
They stand past sadness, outside
indifference and justice, more solid
than what we call love.
Mary Ann Larkin’s book of poems That Deep and Steady Hum was published in 2010 by Broadkill River Press. Other publications include: The Coil of the Skin, by Washington Writers Publishing House; White Clapboard, by Carol Allen of Philadelphia; The DNA of the Heart, with Patric Pepper, by Pond Road Press; A Shimmering That Goes with Us by Finishing Line Press; and gods & flesh, by Plan B Press. Her poems have appeared in Poetry Ireland Review, New Letters, Poetry Greece, PoetLore, and numerous other magazines, as well as in more than twenty local and national anthologies, including America in Poetry, Ireland in Poetry, and Loving, a poetry and art series published by Harry Abrams of New York. She was awarded a writer’s residency at the Jentel Arts Foundation in Wyoming in 2008 and at Yaddo in 2013. She has taught writing and literature in a number of colleges and universities, most recently at Howard University in Washington, DC.