Graveyard Poker

CAT Phillips

The game's gone underground.

The old uncles together again,
horizontal in their best black suits
as if for church or Sunday dinner
whisper bets across the mounds
over grandma in peach brocade
stiffly disapproving, and reach
with arms unnaturally long
to play their cards.

Uncle Claude disturbs the quickening soil
Raise you
And Uncle Elmer, softly
See you

CAT Phillips has been writing poetry all her life. She is a retired teacher of English and has enjoyed publication in several local journals, twice in Kelsey Review, published by a local college and twice in a contest for ekphrastic work, poems describing sculptures in Seward Johnson's Grounds for Sculpture.