Anchors aweigh

Lately I’ve found myself drawn

to Asian women in their forties

with bare arms and tanned skin

and shaved pits who graduated

(the women, not the armpits, I mean)

cum laude with double majors in subjects

like environmental studies and international relations

and have slim bodies and smallish breasts

and who are either divorced, one imagines,

or on their second marriage and have a kid

and just a hint of cleavage

and the thing that draws me to them

— which is sort of pathetic because I already have a grandson who can drive and am now exhibiting

(me, not my grandson)

the same flaky red facial patches

that my grandfather

(who looked like the new pope)

exhibited on Sundays at our house

when he would come to 6 o’clock suppers

and my brother and I would snicker

at his involuntary old man noises —

the thing that draws me to them

aside from the hint of cleavage in low-cut tops,

which I believe I’ve already covered,

is their conveyance of aloofness and objectivity

in a world fraying at the edges and cleaving apart

and the way they move their manicured hands

in the face of all this cleavage as they read the news

dispassionately and I emit involuntary old man noises over 6 o’clock suppers as the world burns before me.