San Gabriel Valley Poetry Quarterly

MARK A. FISHER trump

“turn the card”

she whispers

in an atmosphere

of anxiety

the smell of peppers

and cheap incense

trapped by frayed

curtains

that make the room

dark enough

to hold arcana

not trumping

piles of losing scratchers

tossed into drawers

with her dreams

as laughing children

remnants of her magic

fill the backyard of now

still

another card is turned over

on her kitchen table

while she looks for
a better future