Don’t let nobody sweep under your feet, she said
as I pulled my feet up onto the couch,
placing my little girl chin on my knees.
“Why can’t you sweep under my feet?” I asked.
I want to see you married someday, my girl.
From her brown corduroy couch, I watched
as she swept her floors, a wooden handled
straw broom for the kitchen and dining room,
and a rainbow vacuum for the carpets.
She sang and swept. Swept and sang.
I was there the day the salesman sold
her the promise of clean carpets
and an easier time keeping her house in order.
It seemed to me she worked just as hard
with the rainbow as she had before.
The day I was moving out of my university dorm
and into my first apartment, she visited me.
She held out a brand-new broom and dustpan.
Don’t take your old broom into your new house, she said.
Let the old dirt stay where it is.
When everyone had cleared out of my new place,
I swept and sang. Sang and swept.
I surveyed my kitchen floors just like she had
and decided it was probably for the best
that I’d left the old dirt in my old life.
Tag Archives: granny
Trash Birds
Don’t call them trash birds,
Granny always said while she walked
towards Walmart and watched the flock
circle and swoop from the neon sign
to the parked cars to the discarded
French fries and spilled milk shakes.
We don’t mock one of God’s creatures
for doing what they were designed to do.
I can’t count the names thrown my way,
can’t count the ways they have all crumpled
and collected against my ribs
and throat like pieces of garbage
flung from a speeding car on I-64:
too much, not enough, slut, crazy, needy,
attention-seeking, a waste of time, bitch,
not good enough, unfit
to name a few.
So, I never call them trash birds.
I call them by their proper name
and watch with delight when they take flight
as one dancing phantom,
dark against the fiery October sky.
In my dreams, each grackle in the plague
settles on my shoulders and picks up a name,
swallows it down, unhurt and nourished –
doing what they were designed to do.
Sarah Stoltzfus Allen 