RICE PARADISE

My grandmother didn’t let us leave rice on the plate.
Instead of telling us about hunger in India and the children
with swollen bellies, who would have opened mouths wide for each grain
she with a screeching fork would drag all the leftovers
to the center of the plate and nearly in tears
tell us how the uneaten rice
would rise to the heavens to complain to God.
Now she’s dead and I imagine the joy of the encounter
between her false teeth and the angels
with the flaming sword at the gates
of rice paradise.
They will spread, beneath her feet, a carpet of red rice
and the yellow rice sun will beat down
on the white bodies of the Garden’s lovelies.
My grandmother will spread olive oil on their skin and slip
them one by one into the cosmic pots of God’s kitchen.
Grandma, I feel like telling her, rice is a seashell that shrunk
and like it you rose from the sea.
The water of my life . .

RICE PARADISE