For Alyssa
5/31/80 – 4/15/11
You come in from a cigarette on the back porch
trailing perfume I can’t pinpoint at Macy’s anymore.
Sarah says something and your laugh knows one volume
warming the kitchen tiles and leftover turkey.
Great Aunt Christine puffs up in the dining room
and mutters something unsavory about peas in a pod
her tits sagging onto the polished walnut table, heavy
with the husband she never managed to find.
I’d rather be tucked in a pod next to your smile
though its wingspan wouldn’t leave much room for me
and it is too bright and beautiful for plant enclosure
than anywhere near her sourpuss cat-butt scowl.
Why hasn’t karma slapped her down
the stairs, accidentally? Why is she
still sucking up life without tasting it
and you’re gone?