a gingerbread moment

for the first time since i touched off in florida
i felt good
not 'had fun'
but felt good
me and my Bubbe
left the bowling alley
where her two youngest sons
born 8 minutes apart
celebrated their 43rd birthday
I drank a Guiness
as we sat on the couch
where she now sleeps
watching her team
the Miami Heat
trounce Atlanta
she's been an avid basketball for about six decades
when she met my grandfather
a stout jew with a winning smile and solid jumpshot
in Matuchen New Jersey

she almost missed the game, she's
slipping in all the slightest ways
it really only shows when she's driving but she has always been
the most lucid
her sister Ida
the most caustic
wonderful
hilarious
bitch of a beast
of a frizz haired
thick goggled
lipstick caked woman
you'd ever meet
was admitted to a hospital
food poisoned
awash in her own shit
she was the only person i needed to see in florida and i wonder if i will
for years
i've meant to get a handheld tape recorder
for the sole purpose of saving her stories
not for family history
not for posterity
because they're unique
to her
because they're
good
i
wonder
now
if i will
Muriel is all alone
save for Lenny who is all these old women
whose children have long broken contact
have
and he gives them each two hours a day
Ruthie
whose house is full of weird,ugly dolls, animatronics and money
is all alone
even her wits have left her
she has become dubious
all of her stories suspect
paranoid of every friend she doesn't remember paying a visit

when I was eleven
I had lunch with my Grandma Sylvia
(Bubbe is also Sylvia)
whose alzheimer's was further along
peered across the Baker's Square table
wondering
who was this strange boy sitting with her and her son
and with
smile and spite
she says to me
You look Arab
and picked at her food

tha year I started carrying a camera
everywhere that i went
because I was afraid
that without documentation
i would forget
that is how i ended up where i am
a writer struggling through photo classes
because through obsession
out of fear
i found a knack
not a skill
but a
knack

i don't want to
forget

anyone

but

my

self