Wednesdays at the Rosholt Nursing Home, 1986

I’m sixteen and new, my young hands like white gloves
turning red from the dishwasher’s steam.

I spray piles of mush off the dinner trays and down
the disposal, flecks of brown (maybe meatloaf?), green

(perhaps beans?), and yellow (definitely corn), these drab
flecks misting my clothes and glasses. Prop the trays

in neat rows in the rack, slam the stainless steel
door, push the button, and wash away the evidence.

In the dining room Mabel has picked out the beans
from her chili again, lined them up in a neat row on the windowsill.

Wheel of Fortune spins on TV and Calvin moans guttural.
Orville repeats softly, “Shut up. Shut up. For God’s sake, shut up.”

Someone has crapped her pants, the smell floating,
an olfactory cacophony of shit and meat and death.

An aid in a blue smock enters, smells, and leaves
this room full of gray and white curls, lambs waiting.

Someone is humming oh my darling oh my darling oh my darling,
a sound like mothballs rattling in the throat.

Outside the naked sun leans lazily against the windows;
someone’s grandchildren run to a hot car. Their arms

grab at the air, feel it against their skin, the car rolling away
as they retreat, retreat. Hazel hoards napkins in her purse.

“Have you seen my husband? Have you seen John?” She
is in the kitchen doorway again, her eyes wide. I say

what I’ve been told. Yes, I just saw him go down
that hallway. Her eyes follow my arm, my pointing finger, my lie.

All day her wheelchair searches down the dead
end corridors. Calvin moans and someone sits in shit

and the beans wither on the sill under the hot sun and there’s
so much steam it’s hard to see what’s real and I think