Last Game

by David Allen Sullivan

We dealt out six hands,
but when Dad had to follow
suit he tried to pick

the card from the pile
since he was playing Rummy
while we were playing Hearts.

We took turns shouting
into his good ear. Each time
his turn came around

he’d pick up a card.
When he fanned out his flushed hand
we called him the winner,

but I keep playing,
telling him off. Hard to say
goodbye in pieces,

hard that he’ll never
shoot the moon, delighted when
we gang up and lose.

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David Allen Sullivan’s first book, Strong-Armed Angels, was published by Hummingbird Press, and three of its poems were read by Garrison Keillor on The Writer’s Almanac. Every Seed of the Pomegranate, a multi-voiced manuscript about the war in Iraq, was published by Tebot Bach. A book of translation from the Arabic of Iraqi Adnan Al-Sayegh, Bombs Have Not Breakfasted Yet was published in 2013, and Black Ice, about his father’s dementia and death, is forthcoming. He teaches at Cabrillo College, where he edits the Porter Gulch Review with his students, and lives in Santa Cruz with his love, the historian Cherie Barkey, and their two children, Jules and Mina Barivan. He was awarded a Fulbright, and is teaching in China 2013-2014 (yesdasullivan.tumblr.com). His poems and books can be found at http://davidallensullivan.weebly.com/index.html