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Frank Matagrano
Date of Birth: 12/28/71
Location: Queens, NY
Email: movingplatform@mindspring.com
Website: http://movingplatform.home.mindspring.com
Published in: Melic Review, Pudding Magazine, Poetry Super Highway
WATCHING GRANDMA DIE
If it's a winter with teeth, the kind
that closed Brooklyn for three days and had
everyone stagger down Carrol on rubber
and kitty litter, then I will wear my long
black coat and speculate wind and burn
ratios from the Wishnick Atrium window,
the fifteenth floor where all
cancer patients are sent to die.
Burke will watch the open jawed drift
with me, talking about his blueblacks,
his orange reds, the sight line he stole
from Dali. He will tell me the amount
of time it takes to melt crayons on a steam
radiator, and how long it takes to color
the white spaces along 33rd and Lexington
the old fashioned way. I will remember
an article from Newsweek that said
64% of this country believed
in angels, if Burke would sketch snow
angels with the faces of American royalty,
a Roosevelt, a Kennedy, a weeping Nixon,
and at the election booth, the entire court
of Heaven waiting in single file,
Michael on deck practicing his swings,
Gabriel chewing on a sausage with peppers,
Raphael scratching his balls
and Uriel, poor Uriel, stuck at the end,
wiping the sweat off his glasses.