Kevin Ridgeway

Kevin Ridgeway is the author of Too Young to Know (Stubborn Mule Press) and nine chapbooks of poetry including Grandma Goes to Rehab (Analog Submission Press, UK). His work can recently be found in Slipstream, Chiron Review, Nerve Cowboy, Plainsongs, San Pedro River Review, The Cape Rock, Trailer Park Quarterly, Main Street Rag, Cultural Weekly and The American Journal of Poetry, among others. He lives and writes in Long Beach, CA.

CLEANING HELGA’S GRAVE

My grandmother’s Swedish mother
was run over by a car in 1932,
flattened out of existence
after the family moved to California.
We found an old photograph of them
standing over her grave with the words
written in cursive on the backside.
My grandmother had started
to develop dementia, so we had
to move fast. She told us what
she could remember about
her mother’s death in tears
of confusion and fear at how long
her mother had been dead.
My mother and I blazed down
the 5 Freeway to Forest Lawn
with my grandma in the back seat.
We found a large green hill known
as the Sunrise Slope near
a mausoleum where Hollywood
legends rest in eternal silence.
We saw the headstone
and helped my grandmother
walk halfway down the steep hill
until she sat down on the grass
next to the grave, exasperated
until she saw her mother’s name
and the vintage, old world light
in her eyes became flooded
by her tears before I made
a funny face to cheer her up
enough to find herself
behaving like a grandmother again,
telling me in her gentle whisper
to smile for once, before she added
that she could never take me anywhere.