Kate Perruzzi

You are at a BBQ in your uncle’s backyard. Scores of tiny blonde cousins filter around table legs like frenzied fish in a shallow pond. One of them catches their chin on your knee and glares at you. You do not recognize her.

Your uncle is seated in a low lawn chair beside the buffet of mayonaised foods: potato salad, with and without egg, macaroni salad, chicken salad. None of these are salads, you think, and swig hard on a warm Miller Lite. Your uncle is quiet, transfixed, watching the sky. His eyes are cloudy security glass and the man working the space behind his face is a bank teller on qualuudes.