grandma’s cane

 in the kitchen after lunch

     cage the elephant

       play on

the Bose portable speaker

   sitting atop the duckegg blue fridge.

                                                                             we do the dishes - you

    the two cousins, a girlfriend, a boyfriend, that aunty

             and her quiet brother, me. someone

   says, “this is well beast.” an ant, green,

walks onto someone’s shoe

& grandma 

enters with a large

alabaster porcelain dish

   containing the carcass of a goose

puts it by the sink, 

       the worn sterling silver sink where the vegetarian meatloaf crumbs lie

   & leaves. the empty

chair is only glanced at

sometimes. a lot of phones

     are on the extendable table, beech. when

    attention goes to a cracker

joke teller, there are phone checkers. “what

do you call happy mushrooms?”

“fun guys.”

“put that fucken phone down,” says grandma to someone, then

someone else, grandma then with both hands raising her black locust walking cane above her head.

someone muffles a monster roar

            & someone says: “woah,

         simmer down Tusken Raidma. These are not

the millennials you’re looking for.”

someone quietly pushes grandma’s cane down & grandma begins to laugh

then everyone does

like matryoshka dolls

emerging in a desert ravine. nobody

knows anything

about the price of wheat on jakku or in argentina.

“woah, Miles,” says someone as the Bose now sitting on the piano emits a new sound. people are leaving. “Yule be back,” says someone

to one chuckle. 

2017