We’re in the cocktail lounge.
Mrs. Gilani orders her husband
a Chivas on the rocks and asks me,
her waiter, for a cigarette. “I need something
to do with my hands
while I’m waiting.” The Shah––a title
he answers to––is late
getting back from the thirty-six
holes he played today.
Her British accent
almost masks her annoyance as she talks
to us staff like we’re people.
We are charmed.
As a couple they weave
an illusion of patriarchy and
the nobility of capitalism.
It’s almost sunset when he arrives,
fresh from shower and massage, in
a silk achkan, dark, his Scotch now
watery. He orders another. The room turns
its head, he’s assumed to be
Indian royalty and the turban
makes him look taller.
Some members are relieved––
the Club risks becoming monoethnic––
no one questions his provenance.
We are charmed.
Many decades from now
I’ll will find his obituary on-line:
she gets a mention as his first,
but his golf trophies dominate
the long write-up.
There’s no mention of “shah.”
Another search reveals
the title is not Indian.
Jack Mackey’s first book of poems, Up, Out & Over (Kelsay Books, 2024) won awards from the Delaware Press Association (first place) and from the National Federation of Press Women (second place). A Best of the Net nominee, Jack was awarded a fellowship in poetry by the Delaware Division of the Arts. Individual poems have appeared in Gargoyle, Third Wednesday, Broadkill Review, Anti-Heroine Chic, Argyle, and other literary publications. Jack lives in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware.
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