Black Kitchen Shoes

my grandmother
boiled potatoes and cabbage
in the same pot, ladling the fat from the simmer
with the same spoon she used to lay welts
into the corm of my back

she used the flat
of her hand to pit bulgur mewl
and a gar to well the crusts, the one my father
used to stave apples from the top
of the neighbour’s tree

my grandmother
fed us blood pudding and rice
barrowing cows’ tongue in cheesecloth, and wore
the same black kitchen shoes to church
summer through fall