Cousins in this prison town bloated with step
relatives and time, you and I grew cynical
and fifteen. Grandmother, slightly punctured
by forgetting, a slow leak, sank backwards
into the rumpus room couch and clucked
her tongue at obscenity, a six-story Underdog.
From her unkept garden we picked a moldy
squash. We pierced its custard-colored flesh
with the wood-stems of two Moon Travelers
laced with sawdust from the Fourth of July,
fuses twisted like thin vines. Who has not
sinned. Flecks of squash on your upturned
face. Grandmother mumbled a dinner table
grace to the deities of can-mold cranberry.
One bows one’s head. Three oval seeds fell
to your plate from the loose curls of your hair.
Todd Smith 