It was part of her parlor’s darkness
during the war years—its Gothic cabinet,
its shadowy speaker behind a thin lattice
like the face of a priest—but when
my grandmother snapped its switch
each evening to tune in the news,
it opened the tiny Japanese fan
of its dial and light spilled over her fingers,
swollen and stiff. And in near darkness
my sister and I, shushed into silence,
and Grandmother, rubbing and kneading
the pain from her hands, sat there
at the rear of the action, a patrol
in the weak yellow glow from the war.