Iris

Mother was a Southern raconteur:
In the central myth of my childhood,
she watches her mother,

in a nurse’s uniform,
walking home from work.
She sees a car veer around the corner.

Her older sister Mavis
says she could not have seen
the blood-stained body lying in the Charlotte street.

I last saw my mother in a San Diego supermarket,
my shopping cart between us,
all the polished bounty of red delicious banked behind her.