​Pseudodementia
​Emma Talamantes
 
 
Grandmother’s resting home is in the suburban sprawl of Sacramento.
Here, everyone looks like scorpions,
sitting under their Central Valley sun,
the rice paddy capital of the West Coast.
 
They are having the Senior U.S. Open after we leave.
Old white men swinging metal sticks
on a dry patch of grass.
My mother is at home.
 
My grandmother and I sit on the veranda.
Her hands comb through my hair.
I ask her if she remembers a time when we were at the old house
and she made me guacamole.
She asks me about her father.
She asks me when my grandfather is coming home from work.
I say forget about the men, Grandma,
your brain is a mango.
 
We sit.
 
This town belongs at the bottom of the Grand Canyon.
Same mediocre river. Same molesting heat.
My father says I can already hear the seniors pushing
small white balls from Grandma’s room. The AC is broken.
The repairman isn’t answering the phone.
In this dry heat our brains are all mangoes,
all peeling open,
 
coalescing past trauma into a single fruit.
 
 
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