I saw the news in obituary black and
alabaster-chamber white. Women mulled about
in shining dresses, all pinwheel-galaxy black.
The men’s suits: darkness-between-
stalks-late-in-the-cornfield black

The pastor wore a Cosmopolitan’s-table-of-contents
white stock in the non-air-conditioned
church. His sermon dripped on the bereaved
like hardening wax. A portly woman wheezed
in the second row. A first-roadkill-of-summer
red paper fan swayed  idly in her left hand.

The coffin creaked, 4am-grandpa‘s-coffee brown
the procession moved outside slowly. The moment
was like when two trains  are idle and one begins
to drift forward. From inside the other,
it feels as if we are drifting backward.

Backward to days before with the namer in his study.
He has on his 1862-edition-Les-Misérables tan
blazer. His wrists crawl out the undersized sleeves.
Above his roof, the sky milks over
to 4th- grader’s-scratched-locker blue.

A wine glass full of just-waking-up-seeing-steam-
waft-from-under- the-bathroom-door white wine
rests on his particle board desk. I want a 70s B movie villain
to bust through the door yelling, "I’m not sorry" and shoot him
with a chipping-paint-bike-rack-next-to-the-library¬ grey revolver.
I want the namer to be speechless, knock over the wine glass
and die with grandma’s-new-couch red  pooling on his blazer.

The truth is my grandma’s new couch is this ugly
brown-yellow color. I don’t really know how to describe it.