Rebecca Foust

BOOKS FOR THE BLIND

Blind from Diabetes,
Gramma sat in her
bentwood rocker
and tapped out her hours
on the front stoop.
She could get around
well enough to use
the bathroom,
pull on her hairnet
and support hose,
make coffee and fry up
scrapple for breakfast,
then move to the porch
to sip wind and weather,
drink liquid birdsong
and wait. My mom
mail-ordered the books
each week from
The Library of Congress,
ugged them up
the dirt path past
Gramma's old hand plough
subsiding to rust, to the
leaning white farmhouse
in need of new paint,
each book the weight
of a small child
or damn greyhound bus
hitched up on her hip.
Thick, flat plastic square,
like the hard-sided case
you might pack a bomb in,
all done up with buckles
and seatbelt-size straps.
Gramma's fingers frantic
fumbling at the catch.

* * *

FEAR

It was when I saw the words Right to Life
over disembodied
stigmata-ed, prayer-knotted hands

in her waiting room, the Costco-size crucifix
above the desk
where she sat reading Mom's chart,

when she rolled the stone over the mouth
of any talk
about the need to not prolong pain; it was

then that I felt the cold speculum spoons
in the deep place,
felt the unfolding of stainless steel wings.

Rebecca Foust's book DarkCard won the 2007 Robert Phillips Poetry Chapbook Award and her full length collection was a finalist for Poetry's 2007 Emily Dickinson First Book Award. Mom's Canoe from which this selection was taken won the 2008 Robert Phillips Poetry Chapbook Prize. Her poetry has won several distinctions and has been published Atlanta Review, JAMA, Margie, North American Review, Nimrod and others.