Making Cornbread

The only poem my grandma knows

Photo: Douglas P. Perkins

My grandma — who is tall and skinny with aged locks cut short; who will greet each person who walks into her home with a hug and a kiss on the cheek; who helped the grandpa that I never met build the house where she raised six kids and still lives, the house with the door that you don’t have to knock on before you go in — she knows only one poem, which she was taught by her mother…