The Old Woman

She comes on and I get up.
Thank you, she says
and that’s the last of it.

Her eyes look at her master, studying the
master.
enchanted, threatened,
hypnotized by that master.

She is a day of the dead doll, the shell of a cicada
on a workbench
under the ax
in all its splendor—wrinkled and pink warm.

Across the way, a girl eats a green apple
and writes with a pen.
does a crossword puzzle.
It all seems to blast this
old woman
away
as she sits there, holding onto the bar.

The apple eating, the writing,
the crossword,
the face that looks like
washed laughter.

And over there, a man with
immense feet grumbles in his
fat brown throat and
spits hell
into a napkin.

The old woman watches,
peaceful as the
stuffed egret