Jana Watson

Granny Jim

The census man called your children bastards.
I have one of those, too. A baby boy with his
father’s eyes and my last name. I thought of
him and you when I told your granddaughter
that I think god has a wife.
She said that was blasphemy.

You said that you never needed a husband.
You had too much work to do making
tinctures and bringing babies. You probably
wiped the brow of the census man’s wife
as you coaxed his children into this realm
while he was elsewhere, a satellite,

redundant and cold,
yet somehow a judge
of his primary body.

I cleared your grave in the old of the moon.
My children played tag around headstones
of their forbears after adorning river rocks
and limestone with acorns and pine boughs.
I did not tell them to do this, their unbidden
offerings to the dead were born
as they were:

threaded through a needle eye
by the hand of god,
tomato red and woolen,
ticking with conscience.

They laid down to rest
in the unmarked depressions,
offering only themselves to the almost forgotten.
The census man is here somewhere,
under the same earth as you.

Earth, not death, is the great equalizer.
Earth and bastards.
And the way both need
no consecration.

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Jana Watson is a poet and folklorist from North Alabama who recently relocated to New Hampshire. Her work has appeared in Smoky Quartz and is forthcoming in Tributaries and Rawhead. When she's not writing, she can be found exploring tidepools, transcribing old letters, or driving south through the Appalachian Mountains. Find her on Instagram @janawatsonwrites.