| Remembering My Grandmother A.D. Winans |
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Oh how I hated that Third Street Hotel My grandmother old and wrinkled Sitting in the lobby with withered Men and women reclining on worn couches Staring off into space With eyes like death warrants The smell of death The smell of funeral parlors Filling the lobby My grandmother pale and sickly Her voice shaking like An earthquake tremor Rising slowly to hug me Wearing her years Like rosary beads Oh how I hated those visits Watching those old people |
Shuffle in and out of the hotel On their way to a Sunday walk Or a meal at a Tenderloin cafeteria Looking like wasted corpses On a 24 hour pass from the morgue Living behind drawn shades In single lightbulb rooms Sealed like tombs Walking in endless circles Like a mad conductor At an abandoned railway yard Oh how I hated those visits With death Seeing my own mortality In my grandmother's eyes The old hotels are gone now  |
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