Cardboard Soup

In the old days, Grandmother
made us soup from old farmers
catalogs. You could see
pictures of soggy fifties corn

in her grounded down teeth
as she slurped the pulpy broth,
the ancient ink blurring
the once Technicolor vista.

Once I thought I saw wheat
growing at the back of her mouth,
leaning out of her lips
to get a closer look at the seeds

she had sown; now rotting
in the soil slowly dissolving
in our stomachs.