A rickety door, a back one or side, not stable

No wrought iron bars like the door at my Aunt Cherry’s house

on the East Side, her husband Ben always working on a car

in the thin driveway, his mother who lives next door, cell-like

den adjacent to the dining room, whose wooden table

is always polished, place mats always set, napkins folded,

Cherry domineering through the kitchen, Ben, inside, alone,

watching basketball, calling players by the wrong names,

his son upstairs on the GameCube when no one still plays

the GameCube, or likes white-people sports like NASCAR

or hockey, son only coming down when he’s hungry to eat

his mom’s potato salad or barbecue, which everyone else

says tastes like lighter fluid, except for my mother, who looks

just like Cherry in the face when telling the apocryphal version

of her and Ben’s wedding: how, instead of kissing at the altar,

they just shook hands; the officiant called them by the wrong names.