Zina Gomez-Liss

The Gamblers

When we were babies we crawled by their seats.

They gave us Coke in nippled bottles, sweets

To keep us happy while they talked all night

And filled the room with smoke and drank Bud Light.

The men would groan and hand their hard-earned pay

To lucky wives who’d laugh the night away,

And as we heard the rumble of the tiles

They’d speak of what they missed across those miles:

The scent of blooming sampaguita flowers,

The fear they felt from summer monsoon showers,

The funerals of parents that they missed

And all the little cousins, never kissed.

And as the years went by we ceased to care

About this game they played, but it was there

That we grew up and all of them grew old,

And now their numbers shrink. Are they consoled,

The few of them still left to play mahjong,

With what they risked and gained? No longer strong,

They sit at noon instead of late at night

To spend their time together, all despite

Complaints of aching hands and curving backs.

They play for pennies now. The rules relax.

We watch them in a room all gold with sun.

“Just one more game,” they say. “And then we’re done.”

Zina Gomez-Liss lives in Boston and is an MFA candidate in Poetry at the University of St. Thomas, Houston. She is deputy editor at New Verse Review, and her writing can be found on her Substack, The Beauty of Things.