—

That was when one of the nieces said another was pregnant,
her bones like scaffolding—

placing all the steel bulk front-and-middle,
structurally inept among her sisters. The too-tall-beauties.

And that would have been when the day
fell off, when Grandma made love to the crucifixion story,
the praise-be-to—

but she was busy, listening to a grandson complain
that the brown of the trees was too brown,
that the horizon seemed to spread perpetually,

that the green screen backdrop
was somewhere, that the movies taught him that much.

One niece said that another had no acid
in her litmus. No morality in her Kohlberg.

Another said she could catch simulacra in a mason jar
and watch it light up her bedroom until morning.

Grandma sat center, back against a tree—
watching the leaves drop, wondering why they kept falling.