Poetry Breakfast

Gathering Grandma

A child of the Great Depression,
grandma became an adult
who stocked up on paper towels,
toilet paper, coffee, sugar, and
flour by the pound, even
those braided multi-colored area rugs.

Her upstairs bedrooms,
once occupied by her two children,
became overrun with piles of
those items – on the beds, under
the beds, on dressers, in dresser
drawers and mounds scattered
all around the hardwood floors.

Never missing a sale, she couldn’t
have used all she hoarded
if she lived 100 years.
We used to tease her
about her cluttered upstairs collection,

us grandchildren, at her house, taught
to use toilet paper sparingly,
unless in public bathrooms, where we always
were to cover up those unsanitary seats,
to ration paper towel squares to dry
our grabby hands, to re-use
small Dixie Cups, our initials
marked on the bottoms,
until they were pulp.

About the Poet:
Lylanne Musselman is an award winning poet, playwright, and artist, living in Indianapolis, IN. Her work has appeared in Pank, Flying Island, Poetry Breakfast, The New Verse News, Ekphrastic Review, and Rat’s Ass Review, among others, and many anthologies.  In addition, Musselman has twice been a Pushcart Nominee. She is the author of three chapbooks, with a fourth forthcoming, Weathering Under the Cat, from Finishing Line Press. She also co-authored Company of Women: New and Selected Poems (Chatter House Press, 2013).

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