ode to my grandmother

if she was a patron saint / she would be patron saint of perfect hostas / or sugar free pudding / or saturday morning gossip / sometimes, she meets strangers at the Hy-Vee / and tells them i’m going to be a famous writer / which is hard, because almost everyone / in a Minnesota Hy-Vee is / her distant relative / or ex-coworker / sometimes, i am sure she was the first woman / pomegranate squishing down her open palm / in the garden of eden / my grandmother / who was a midwife / who easily could have birthed us all / my grandmother / whose daughter / my mother, / died five days before christmas / and / still / her tree was the most beautiful every year / my grandma tells me she got kicked out at thirteen / after / she lived with a different family every year of high school / she’d go on dates just for the free meal / she tells me good thing she was pretty / or she wouldn’t have eaten / i see her / prom queen hands / pressed / in the iowa dirt a month ago / she told me her dad died when she was 16 / when I asked / why she didn’t tell me before / she said she forgot to mention it / when my dad didn’t call on my birthday / she made me a chocolate cake / box duncan hines / can frosting / my name in red sprinkles / to cover a forty five degree tilt / she laughed / it’s ugly, but it tastes good / sometimes / she talks to the sky at night / asks my mother to make things easy for me / my grandmother / who raised me for a year after her daughter died / 64 with a baby / immaculate conception / sometimes / I imagine putting the death tape / on reverse / sitting with her at the tv / watching my mother / bloom/ over and over / my grandmother says / she stopped going to church when my mom died / because all she’d do is sit in the pews and cry /my grandmother has seen so much pain / and still loves easily / simply / she is the most ordinary miracle / i have ever seen / sometimes i wish i could replace her arthritic fingers with my own / so when she gets to heaven / she can hold my mother the way she used to / for her / i hope to grow old / so when i get there / she knows what my mother would have looked like / a soft hand reaching out to touch her daughter’s face / again

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KJ Kieras is a poet and screenwriter currently based in Minneapolis, MN. They have previously competed on several slam poetry teams including the YouthSpeaks Seattle 2020 Brave New Voices team and the MacSlams Traveling Tour Team. In 2023 and 2025 they won the Midwest Poetry Mashup alongside the MacSlams team. Their work can be found on Button Poetry’s YouTube channel. When not writing, they can be found performing in drag around the twin cities as Lucy Goosey.