Cathy Wittmeyer

“Many a psychiatrist has suggested to the alcoholic that interest in a hobby be one to which the alcoholic can
devote the rest of his life.”

-  April 1949, Hope for the Alcoholic

Grandpa lived on the mauve velour sofa

Saturdays.  His stint at the mill wore him

down like his imprint in the cushions under

the beer cans stuffed with cigarette butts

at night when he rose for another shift.

Grandma and I hustled at the clothesline

strung in the cluttered kitchen for wash day.

A Winston in his lips, Grandpa called me

to the living room.  I dropped the clothes-

pins like pennies.

A wooden work bench pulled alongside,

Grandpa held up a braided leather band,

I reached, and jumped to grab it.

It has no beginning and no end, you see?

I said,

Just like God. He smiled and

his approval flowed through me like

Grandma’s butterscotch, hot on a sheet.

Want to learn how to make one?

His bear paw tousled my hair. I knelt

on shiny AA pamphlets and pistachio shells

intent on his every slice in the leather strip.

Aromas of wood and leather carried me

to my own dream of horse and tack room.

Three straight cuts spaced to make four.

Both ends intact hung on a peg board.

See these, 1,2,3,4? Keep your eye on’m.

His fingers stained pistachio pink with

almond-shaped nails worked the braid

like a sculptor crouched over the detail

of a  hand. Ashes singed my knee.

Grandma stormed in,

She’s too young for your silly hobbies.

The patterned carpet blurred beneath me

clutched like a football under her arm.

Mumbled prayers to a list of saints

looked more like curses on her reddened face.

Back in the safety of a steamy kitchen, handing

clothes-pins and sucking on butterscotch

I heard pamphlets fly and a can crack open.

Cathy Wittmeyer is a poet, mother, lawyer and engineer from Buffalo, New York. She works in Dornbirn, Austria. Her work has appeared in The Ithac Journal, Noble Gas Quarterly, the Aesthetic Apostle, and a few anthologies among others. See more at cathywittmeyer.com.

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