At Brown’s

an unruly crowd has filled the parking lot at brown’s lobster pound they can feel the hot airborne oil and smell the deep-fried clams as they pass the kitchen vents

they eat at picnic tables crammed inside or on the deck sporting a classic view of flat marshes and the nuclear reactor dome

at the intersection down the road once stood an inn where nana’s father would rent rooms for a month every year afforded only by an illegal sublet to fellow horse-gamblers from florida

and so every year nana and the others summered in seabrook and hampton ditching the moribund lawrence mills for the frigid surf and the sun that ruddied their skin

now in brown’s lobster pound i cannot see the spot on nana’s nose where she had a carcinoma removed she’s smiling so broadly unknowing her first great-grandchild is here