Sitty

A margin scribbled Book Of Saints
stuffed with bitter napkin prose:
Sitty’s ironic scrapbook
full of fragments, folded mementos.

She came from Lebanon to the Dakota plains,
played with her sisters on Sitting Bull’s grave,
birthed eight babies, many on the kitchen table,
my father, her youngest, in a taxi’s backseat.

Nobody knew of the scrapbook.
But I knew she was a poet.
Of dozens of grandchildren, I was chosen.

I followed Sitty down the steep wooden stairs
into the dim sloping basement Gitu dug with his hands.
Sitty rolled dough, I rolled the jar of wood-carved
faded red and black checkers, colors swishing
the black and grey checkered floor cold beneath me,
ancient oven hotter than modern,
yielding loaves of unleavened bread.

Eighty-eight years spent feeding children, children’s children,
Sitty’s kitchen was a scented fingerprint:
cinnamon, onions, whiskey, honey.

Setting plate before me, Sitty said “Eat!”
as was her custom. But this time
she sat near, stared far, embodied
the only story she ever told me:

“I remember seeing the gypsy dance,
bright skirts flourishing rich and worn,
eyes steady yet moving:
the gypsy woman bore straight into my soul with her eyes,
dancing to my drumming heart, and then,
I’ll never forget…she sat down before me…
right there on the street
letting me admire her shiny rings and painted face.
And when she smiled at me,
I felt colorful, beautiful as she,
even as I stood lanky,
awkward
in my plain, dull smock.”

--Diana Tigerlily