My Grandfather’s Hands

As a child I was told the cruel history:
how he poured hot soup over my grandmother’s head,
chained his sons in the garage to a coal stove,
made them go without food,
would not allow children to speak at the table,
slapped them across the head if they did.

The day his youngest son was born
with a hole in his heart
my grandfather made a novena.

As an adult I faced his hilly garden,
admired the ascending rows of
peppers, garlics, tomatoes, onions, grapevines.

Pointing to a plant I didn’t recognize
he motioned me to a shed
where rows and rows of unfamiliar
leaves hung on string,
the aroma making them known to me.
He pulled one large leaf down,
crinkled it between his plump fingers,
deftly rolled a cigar,
lit a match,
it smelled like home.

We descended the cellar stairs of that house
he had built with those dangerous hands,
where his casks of wine lined the stone walls.

There was no cruelty in the hand
that handed me a glass.

D Marie Fitzgerald is the author of six collections: Is Honesty a Joke?, The Love Song, I Have Pictured Myself for Years, A Perfect World, Reruns, and F&G. Her work has also appeared in numerous publications, most recently Academy of the Heart and Mind, Ocotillo Review, and The Piker Press.

She hosts an authors series at which she showcases local authors. She is a retired English and creative writing instructor and lives in Palm Spring, California.

Versions of this poem appeared in Cholla Needles Issue 27, Academy of the Heart and Mind, Sparks of Calliope, The Piker Press, and in A Perfect World (One Spirit Press).