Kendall is a senior English Literature and Political Science double major from Seattle. They are the president of Mac’s spoken word club, MacSlams, and were a member of Mac’s 2023 Midwest Poetry Mashup winning slam team.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n ode to my grandmother <\/span><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n if she was a patron saint she would be patron saint of perfect hostas. <\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n or sugar free pudding. <\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n or saturday morning gossip. <\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n sometimes, she meets strangers at the hy-vee <\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n and tells them i\u2019m going to be a famous writer <\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n which is hard, because almost everyone in a Minnesota HyVee is her distant relative or ex-coworker. <\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n sometimes, i am sure she was the first woman <\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n pomegranate squishing down her open palm in the garden of eden<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n my grandmother, who was a midwife, who easily could have birthed us all<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n my grandmother, whose daughter, my mother<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n died five days before christmas <\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n and still her tree was the most beautiful every year<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n my grandma tells me she got kicked out at thirteen<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n after, she lived with a different family every year of high school<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n she\u2019d go on dates just for the free meal<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n she tells me good thing she was pretty, or she wouldn\u2019t have eaten<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n i imagine her out there, prom queen hands pressed in the iowa dirt <\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n a month ago, she told me her dad died when she was 16.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n when I asked why she didn\u2019t tell me before, she said she forgot to mention it. <\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n when my dad didn\u2019t call on my birthday she made me a chocolate cake <\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n box duncan hines frosting from a can<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n my name in red sprinkles to cover a forty five degree tilt<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n she laughed, \u201cit\u2019s ugly, but it tastes good.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n sometimes, she talks to the sky at night<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n asks my mother to make things easy for me.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n my grandmother, who raised me for a year after her daughter, my mother died <\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n 64 with a baby, immaculate conception<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n sometimes, I imagine putting the death tape on reverse. <\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n sitting with her at the tv, watching my mother bloom over and over.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n my grandmother says she stopped going to church when my mom died. <\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n because all she\u2019d do is sit in the pews and cry.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n my grandmother has seen so much pain. <\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n and still loves stronger than anyone. <\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n she sang me lullabies for ten years, <\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n and every week she brings cookies to my great uncle in memory care<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n she complains about my punk clothes but patches them anyway.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n she bandaged my knees and dried my tears.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n she is the most ordinary miracle i have ever seen. <\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n sometimes i wish i could replace her arthritic fingers with my own<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n so when she gets to heaven she can hold my mother the way she used to.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n for her, i hope to grow old, so when i get there<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n she knows what my mother would have looked like. <\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n a soft hand reaching out to touch her daughter\u2019s face again.<\/span><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" By Birdie Keller ’24 We are so excited to introduce another edition of Wordplay, where we feature incredible creative writing from our very own senior English majors! This month, Kendall Kieras was generous enough to share a poem. Kendall is a senior English Literature and Political Science double major from Seattle. They are the president […]<\/p>","protected":false},"author":913,"featured_media":0,"parent":5903,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-5959","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/the-words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/5959","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/the-words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/the-words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/the-words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/913"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/the-words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5959"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/the-words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/5959\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7841,"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/the-words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/5959\/revisions\/7841"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/the-words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/5903"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/the-words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5959"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Kendall](\"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/the-words\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/603\/2023\/11\/Kendall_07-1-683x1024.jpg\")
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