Grandpa

for seven days
we left him 

on the lawn
near a flower 

no english 
in his spine

just asleep 
like jesus 

he is a cloud
admit it

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“‘Grandpa’ was written after my grandfather, Felipe Lopez, a Mexican immigrant who learned English, but never aspired to speak it perfectly. I was hoping to pay tribute to him, but the poem wanted to do other things, and after five swift, yet slow moving couplets, the poem ends with a resolve that even surprised me about the whereabouts of my grandfather. This poem, for sure, though brief, has many mysteries.”
—Diana Marie Delgado