Poet Teisha Twomey is currently working on her MFA in Poetry at Lesley University in Cambridge, MA. Teisha’s work has appeared in Ibbetson Street , Fried Chicken and Coffee, The Santa Fe Literary Review, Metazen, Poetica and she recently was selected for publication for the upcoming “Wasn’t That Special?” Anthology. http://www.teishatwomey.blogspot.com/

Teisha Twomey

The Tyrant

You woke too early: Listened to the birds, called back to them.

Easter morning your grandson is beating his fists against the table,
sweaty little tyrant. I’ve propped his rotund body on one knee,

so he can see you press your grizzled mustache against an eggshell,
to teach him, as you taught me: how to blow the innards out

of the ones we want to keep. You use to frighten me; you enjoyed puzzles,
could read maps and a compass. I never knew which way was East.

You woke too early: Listened to the birds, called back to them.

You’d tried to teach me once: Old Sam Peabody, Peabody, Peabody,
who cooks for you? Who cooks for you all? Nonsense, I’d whispered,

copycatting how my mother pitched her hip, when I’d heard her call
you Fascist. You were highbrowed, enveloped by thick publications,

always scribbling illegible things. Requiring cigarette breaks
and bold coffee. Nana swept ash from the floors, just yesterday

You woke too early: Listened to the birds, called back to them,

and we re-papered the country-chicken wallpaper she’d fallen in
love with thirty years ago, kneeling side-by-side tearing the roosters

as you chanted in the baby’s ear : Old Sam Peabody, Peabody, Peabody,
who cooks for you? Who cooks for you all? Such a carefully gauged

whisper: gentle now you crooned as if you were trying to keep us,
by blowing the innards out of him, like another thing you’d wanted to keep.

– Teisha Twomey