Is Your Grandmother Better?

 

 

she has packed up, backed up
hair frizzed in the heat
a fly sizzles
dazzled by the blue light
a fait accompli
on this hot night
and she likes that

she is hacked off
listening each night to the
chink, chinking of espresso cups
to each and every kind of cough, cough
and ‘Is your Grandmother better’
‘The pastries are delicious’
enough, enough!

around her ankles water pools
blue roads map her skin but she is lost and
a thunder gathers between her brows
as a couple browse the menu, peruse, choose
change their minds ‘No, we’ll have
..the soup’ and still her feet ache, still the clatter
and she minds, she really minds the empty chatter

the orders shouted to the kitchen, pouting short order chef
‘two minestrone, table twenty two, no croutons!’
Outside she stands cooling in the heat, blows blue smoke
wipes that brow and listens to the crickets buzz
the steady beat, beating in her breast,
slips off her sneakers to give her feet the rest
thinks about that fly