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Jeanne
Wagner's poetry has appeared in many journals including
Nimrod, Poet Lore, Quarterly West and The Southern
Poetry Review. She has been the recipient of several
national awards, the most recent being the 2003 MacGuffin
Poet Hunt. She has two chapbooks, The Falling Woman
published by Pudding House Press 2001, and forthcoming from
Anabiosis Press in 2004, The Conjurer. A full length
manuscript, The Zen-Pianomover, was published in
2004 as part of the Stevens Manuscript Competition.
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Jeanne Wagner at WgnrTrum@cs.com
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My Grandmother
Watches Sugar Ray Robinson
She
used to watch
the Wednesday Night Fights
on the television below,
her arm stretching
through the black metal scrollwork
of the balustrade,
her hearing aid held out in her hand,
the air warm from rising
to the wooden ceiling
of the snug balcony outside her room
where she sat
in her pale dressing gown,
its field of faded carnations
held closed across her bosom,
gray hair unraveling
from its bun.
I'd hear her whoop and holler
as she followed every uppercut and jab,
reaching that arm through the railing
like a boy
poking his stick through the fence
to goad the air.
All the pummeled molecules
charged into electric current inside that box,
amplified, raced the length of the cord
to her unrequited eardrum,
whenever Sugar Ray, in a ritual wildness
safe and splendid,
took her to the final round.
First
published in The Ledge. Copyright © Jeanne Wagner
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