Learning to Spell, by Grace Grafton

Posted on September 4, 2019

Learning to Spell

By Grace Grafton

The story smoldering, how many years, in the mind’s purse?

Go back into memory’s skein. Maybe pre-memory,

before the grasses separated themselves

from one another and you could run

through their jaunty forms. Or was it

you who was jaunty? Was that when

you loved dogs? Talisman of Happy Body.

Pain the bewilderment of birth forgives,

skin shining in summer sun like a polished

antique vase. Before you knew the word brass,

before you knew the meaning of wonder,

story began its unravel, the dog’s paws

part of it, the speech that grasses

uttered as you passed through their

vocabulary, before your mother set you

down on the cool ground so you could

smell a home that was neither skin nor

breath nor part of her body but that

held you both. Rolled you over

on your back. You saw the stars behind her head.

The Halcyone Literary Review

Volume 1 * Number 1 * Summer 2018

Grace Marie Grafton’s most recent book, Jester, was published by Hip Pocket Press. Six collections of her poetry have been published. Her poems won first prize in the Soul Making contest (PEN women, San Francisco), in the annual Bellingham Review contest, and The National Women’s Book Association, Honorable Mention from Anderbo and Sycamore Review, and have twice been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Ms. Grafton taught for decades with CA Poets in the schools, and was awarded twelve CA Arts Council grants for her teaching programs. Recent poems appear in Sin Fronteras, The Cortland Review, Canary, CA Quarterly, Askew, Fifth Wednesday Journal, Basalt and Mezzo Cammin.