Grandpa’s Preserves

Behind the rhubarb
and the untouched beets,
enwebbed, encrusted
with the dust of decades,
sits Grandpa’s contribution
to the family stores—
a jelly jar
with a double-headed chick,
a wide-mouth quart
with half the hired man’s left foot,
a brine-filled pint
with the minuscule man,
sky-fallen during deer camp’s bacchanal,
great black eyes
in his little blue head,
tiny clenched fists
ceaselessly pounding the glass.


—Gail Sosinsky