Family Reunion

So they arrive, the relatives again

in their tight shoes, the men with ties

as narrow as your finger,

shirts with shadows underneath the arms.

The women fill the doorframes with their hips.

They smell of fish, hot oil, and coffee.

One of them has wrung a chicken’s neck

the night before and enters proudly

with her sloppy bag of broken wings

and breasts like hands folded in prayer.

The older women huddle in the den,

as round as ottomans,

these stumps of motherhood

without a pride of children at their feet.

They know the truth

about your uncle, who has not come in.

They know he lived as well as anyone

in that position could have lived,

given his lameness, deafness of an ear,

that turn of mind.

They just keep coming, even second cousins

twice removed. They’re in your house

all day and night, spaghetti junction

of the roads you’ve travelled, more or less.

Their visit lasts, of course, forever.