From Grandmother's Garden

2022

2.25ft x 2.5ft x 6.5ft

Paper clay, broken porcelain dishes, wire, chains

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The inspiration for this piece is taken from a poem that I wrote which is based off of my relationship with my Grandmother.

(poem at the end of photo slides)

             

Performance of a Flower Doll to a Blossoming Girl

 

at the proper candle-lit table

Grandmother told me “little girls wear frilly dresses

so they won’t get dirty”

 

she compelled me to sit tall

on a stack of textbooks

highchairs were not dignified

enough for her table

and little ones should know

which silverware to use

for each course of the meal and drink

their chocolate milk from a wine goblet

 

Grandmother would lionize those who sat rightly

at her table, those bilinguals

with their erudite exchanges of rhythmic

speech and cutlery placed precisely

on plates to tell if the meal was pleasing

but I could barely cut the meat

or catch the buttered peas

on the silver fork tongs

and if the dinnerware rattled

from my efforts her eyes

would sternly warn me to hush

 

another day I watched as she shaped

a flower form

with her clean wrinkled fingers

 

my Grandmother made dolls like these

in her small childhood

hometown of Madison, Georgia

the petals were white antebellum

skirts swirling around the body

clandestine pollen parts hemmed in

and resting lightly, tickling

like waltzing dances

when she placed it

on my young spring palm

 

I saw the pinked, budded cheeks

of the dancer swaying

a head tilting on a green stem neck

and sepal crossed arms

watching as whispering gentleman wind

held the hands of her sisters descending

the grand staircase of air

from the treetops

 

“she’s pretty as a peach”

Grandmother said

to the lavished flower of decorum

and high cotton living

the flower figure she fashioned

for me felt too heavy in my hand

 

my Grandmother will forget

that they were confederate roses

when I ask her if she remembers

the weeping that blossomed

from the buds 

she will forget that the performer’s

petal skirts flattened

legs folded

head bowed

wilting under the expectation of her gaze

 

my wilting dancer could not shake

her petal fists then

my Grandmother will forget

that she plucked the spent dancer’s

body, pale and rouged

from my expectant palm and tossed

her amongst the duplicate crushed

corpses of her spent tumble-downed sisters

 

and I am now a dryad who cannot turn back

a thing rooted in in the deep South

but reaching for the way out

among the decayed beauties

wafting their softy beckoning

debutante perfume

so sweet it sugars

the tip of my tongue, tasting

of a chorus of worn-string fiddle song