heart:

she said she remembers

they were living in a grain elevator

somewhere up the road

from muleshoe, texas

in the panhandle.

the ones who'd gone before

them said there was work

and land out in california

so they piled their possessions

in a buick some doctor out in LA

needed to be delivered.

they took up a tenant farm

on some scabby acres,

a hill out by ivanhoe,

her father scraped the money

together for a couple of

draft horses and plowed

the rocky soil.

one day,

when she was five,

standing beside

the sunscorched road

her sister said let's 

walk out in front

of that car

speeding up the road.

she was joking, but mom

thought it was a serious

suggestion and she was

caught on the bumper of

a buick skidding from

sixty miles per hour,

dragged along the asphalt.

left a nine scar on her thigh

that she showed us with the story.

when i was five

and we had moved up to modesto

she pulled me out of baptist sunday school.

i always thought it was because

we were now beyond the influence

of her father, the WWI doughboy

farmer baptist sunday school teacher.

but that was not the reason:

she told me a few years ago

that i had told my teacher

that i wanted to know about the devil

and she had not answered. if the church

would not answer the questions

of a five year old, she saw no reason

for me to keep going.

her heart is weak now,

she gets exhausted by

rearranging her pillows

or walking across the room

and yet she says to me, laughing

don't buy me any green bananas.