Game Night By Mylinh Nguyen

Game Night
By: Mylinh Nguyen

I grew up bent over an old table

Every Saturday night, we would gather

around. To play a family game.

A spin of the wheel, the roll of a dice.

Cards hiding shifty eyes, trying not to

get caught. The family of five gather,

around the table. Dad at the head, mom

by his side and the kids trailing behind.

The warmth of the light, the sound of laughter.

“Do you have any 4s?” Dad looks at his

hand. A smirk spreads across his face, “Go Fish.”

After ten long minutes of go fish

The game is done, the score is in, dad wins.

Shoulda seen that comin'. Shoulda thought that

through. Old man sure still has tricks up his sleeve 

“Rematch! Rematch!” Sister and I chant.

Dad laughs out loud as if he wasn’t up

for the challenge. “One more round and that’s it”

we say. Let’s make this an interesting round.

50 in the middle and winner takes all. 

Shoulda seen that comin'. Shoulda thought that

through. Of course dad would win once more.

Family game night, filled with sore losers

And winners, to which the winner gets the

bragging rights, the title and so much more
family game nights are the best nights.

________________________________________________________________________

Prodigy by Charles Simic

I grew up bent over   

a chessboard.

I loved the word endgame.

All my cousins looked worried.

It was a small house

near a Roman graveyard.   

Planes and tanks

shook its windowpanes.

A retired professor of astronomy   

taught me how to play.

That must have been in 1944.

In the set we were using,

the paint had almost chipped off   

the black pieces.

The white King was missing   

and had to be substituted for.

I’m told but do not believe   

that that summer I witnessed   

men hung from telephone poles.

I remember my mother   

blindfolding me a lot.

She had a way of tucking my head   

suddenly under her overcoat.

In chess, too, the professor told me,   

the masters play blindfolded,   

the great ones on several boards   

at the same time.