by the window of his hospital room. So late in the day
and he won’t let us cheat. Cards slipping on his rickety tray,

the orderly rows collapsing into one another,
his hand diminishing, he turns over the one card

that won’t fit anywhere. We couldn’t finish.
Wait, I said, we’re almost done. He shook his head.

Luck, chance. No skill involved. No will. No bluff. No time
to start a new game. I left my father waving in his window.

Days later I bought a deck, shuffled the stiff cards, set them up
the way he’d shown me, and—beginner’s luck?—I won.

Can you win a game you’ve played alone? No need to display
a poker face to yourself. No kidding, he said, I just won too.

My father’s a joker. Bruno, our neighbor used to say,
you’re a card. So no surprise what he taught me:

when you’re done you have nothing in your hand.

A boy asks me
write a poem
to a boy
a poem
is a real thing

like a bike or
goggles for swimming
I’ve been remembering
turtle slow
what it’s like to

be interrupted by myself
beauty a hackney
cab of commerce
sits ahead
proud in the rickshaw

mixing up cultures geographies
biographies like AI
hanging over us
doesn’t hang
cut the gallows tumor

death is a memory
something that happens
to me before
a volcano
stares over the trees